In Myspace, everything about you is public until you make it private. In Facebook, everything about you is private until you decide to share it with someone. Myspace has grown huge, but some people say it’s too open and makes it too easy for stalkers. Facebook is growing fast, but…if you were starting a new network for, say, Colts fans, which model would you follow?
Here’s what one of my staffers concludes:
Our first priority should be to give people the opportunity to share information with the people they want to share it with. We don’t do that. Our default is that everything is viewable by everyone and it’s pretty complicated to figure out how to get control over that.
I think facebook has the right idea, NOBODY can see your profile unless you have friended them. You also have the option of allowing All or some of your networks to see your profile. But, you have to choose to do that. Of course they want you to join a network and provide ways for people to connect (school, work, region).
Their profile privacy controls are very simple and easy to figure out and they are ALL IN ONE PLACE. See attached for my profile privacy page on facebook.
I really wish we would make the default that only friends can see your profile and allow you to expand that as you like.
I really like the idea of regional and college fan networks that people can join and opt to share their profile with.
People WANT to connect with other fans!!!!!!!! but, not necessarily other strangers. There are other places to do that but, only the Colts can provide the colts fan network.
Groups are also places where strangers can interact. We can and should provide groups on all manner of colts topics and for various groups of fans (season ticket etc..). Blue should have a group for the kids! He can announce his appearances there.
If people want to form singles groups for colts fans, they are free to do that.
In the end, we’re planning to go down the middle…we will start by setting everything to “public”, but give users the option to set associate particular piece of personal information with friendlist(s) which they define. The friendlisting tool gives users much more control that Myspace, and offers them as much security as Facebook, but it’s harder to use.
So are challenge will be to make the friendlist tool visible, teach people its benefits, and hope they use it.
I know this is not statistical, but I’ve watched as my son and all his friends have moved to Facebook from MySpace. I believe the interface and performance has a lot to do with that (MySpace is really terrible) as well as the reduction in ads. I guess my point is that they really didn’t care one way or the other.
As a privacy guy that puts his life out on the net, I do care. I want people to explicitly ask first. Nothing angers me more than finding out in some odd disclaimer that my data is public or for sale!
One important thing to remember is that Facebook began on college campuses, where users naturally make friends anyway and use Facebook as the equivalent of a whiteboard on their dorm room door. So they could get away with more privacy as the default. I’m not sure that would work if they hadn’t started with colleges.
I agree with Douglas in that the interface and performance definitely have a lot to do with users switching over to Facebook. And I think you’ve go the right idea for opening up some Colts networking on Facebook.
The groups idea is probably the best yet, and don’t forget to check out “pages” also. They allow you to gather fans and be very flexible with your “page” when it comes to privacy, event management, widgets, and even statistics. They are a great thing to look into when networking commercially on the site.
[...] 3. http://www.patcoyle.net/2007/06/05/facebook-vs-myspace-on-privacy-settings/ [...]