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Two-faced?

When I saw Google‘s Eric Schmidt in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the news yesterday (PDF of Schmidt’s testimony), I asked myself, “Why isn’t Facebook‘s Mark Zuckerberg sitting right beside him?” :-) After all, aren’t both Google and Facebook deeply aware of the personal details of the lives of the Internet’s inhabitants, in ways that they can use to promote their own services? (I know. I know. The hearing was about Google.)

Then I remembered.

Google’s unofficial motto is, “Don’t Be Evil.:-)

Some of the Google Business Principles that are outlined in the PDF of Schmidt’s testimony are:

  1. Do what’s best for the user
  2. Provide the most relevant answers as quickly as possible
  3. Label advertisements clearly
  4. Be transparent
  5. Loyalty, not lock-in
  6. Be open, not closed

Well, you can see right away that pretty much ALL of Google’s Business Principles in the list are AT ODDS with the way Congress does business! :-)

Then last night, I watched many of my Facebook friends REACT WITH DISMAY to the recent changes in the Facebook structure and interface!

Today, I read two articles about recent Facebook activity, one about Mark Zuckerberg’s introduction of Timeline at F8 2011 today in San Francisco, and his introduction of Ticker, and the second was an op-ed piece in CNN entitled, “Does Facebook really care about you?”

(Relax, it was only a rhetorical question. :-) )

Zuckerberg said:

Timeline, he explained, is “the story of your life,” significantly altering the way people’s information is shown on the world’s leading social network, presenting “all your stories, all your apps, and a new way to express who you are,” Zuckerberg said.

Timeline, which went into beta today, is designed to let people go back in their lives, Zuckerberg said. “It’s how you can tell the whole story of your life on a single page.”

Is this what you (all of us Facebook users) really want to do? (I ask rhetorical questions, too! 😉 )

No matter! (Note added September 27, 2011: …after all, Facebook didn’t ASK US! Why would they? :-) )

The article goes on to say that in Timeline, all of a user’s stories appear in the bottom left-hand side of the page, much like the current Wall. On the right, there is a timeline with all posts from various points. There is also a large “cover photo” at the top. The concept is that users are allowed to go back in time to their earliest posts on Facebook. Timeline is already enabled for mobile devices. I’ll bet.

Items in Timeline will be posted on a map so users can see what they have done. The map is built by Bing, a result of the partnership between Facebook and Microsoft.

Break out the garlic, the crucifixes, and the holy water! No unofficial motto of “Don’t Be Evil” THERE! :-)

What about Ticker, a part of the next version of Facebook’s Open Graph? (Darn, another rhetorical question!)

Zuckerberg says that the idea is to enable a “completely new class of social apps.” Once again, I’ll BET! :-) Open Graph, rolled out last year, is “a map of all a user’s connections in the world, and made it so users can connect to anything they want in any way they want.” With the NEXT version of Open Graph, users will be able to connect with an order of magnitude more things than before, using Ticker, a way to express “lightweight” actions, thoughts, etc., anytime! Normally, a user’s post goes into their news feed. However, when a user adds the activity through Open Graph, it will go into Ticker and into Timeline, but NOT into the news feed UNLESS that is the user’s desire. Zuckerberg expects this ability to enable users and others to create “a completely new class of social apps that what was ever possible before. These apps could include apps about TV movies, music, books, lifestyle, etc.

Zuckerberg says that the new feature will allow “frictionless experiences,” “real-time serendipity,” and finding patterns and activity.

Having experienced a Netscape purchase by AOL, Sun’s iPlanet, and other forms of reality distortion, I thought that I had heard all of the BS marketing phrases in the book. I guess I was wrong! :-) Or maybe they just generated a new book….

Soooooo… are Facebook’s users “on board” with all of this? I say “users” rather than “customers” because, as the second article correctly points out, when you are on Facebook, you are a “product,” NOT a “customer.”

When was the last time you wrote a check or swiped a card for Facebook? (Another rhetorical question….) I THOUGHT so! :-)

Facebook’s CUSTOMERS are those “marketing pukes” :-) who actually PAY GOOD MONEY for YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION! Sure, you gave it up for free, but all of that personal information plus all of the connectivity of your social graph are immensely interesting to folks who SELL stuff. (Now you see why I wondered about Zuckerberg not being in the Senate hearing next to Schmidt.)

Ever wonder how the new “Top Stories” are chosen by Facebook? So do I…!

Remember, if you share EVERYTHING and “friend” EVERYBODY, pretty soon your information becomes useless – after all, you are a pretty shallow and promiscuous sort! :-)

As the author, Douglas Rushkoff notes:

‘We are not Facebook’s customers at all. The boardroom discussions at Facebook are not about how to help little Johnny make more and better friendships online; they are about how Facebook can monetize Johnny’s “social graph” — the accumulated data about how Johnny makes friends, shares links and makes consumer decisions. Facebook’s real customers are the companies who actually pay them for this data, and for access to our eyeballs in the form of advertisements. The hours Facebook users put into their profiles and lists and updates is the labor that Facebook then sells to the market researchers and advertisers it serves.

Deep down, most users sense this, which is why every time Facebook makes a change they are awakened from the net trance for long enough to be reminded of what is really going on. They see that their “news feeds” are going to be prioritized by an algorithm they will never understand. They begin to suspect that Facebook is about to become more useful to the companies who want to keep “important” stories from getting lost in the churn — and less useful for the humans.’

My biggest question is whether the Facebook users will bite. After all, most of them don’t care about “frictionless epxperiences” (friction is FUN! :-) BTW, on a motorcycle, a frictionless experience is sliding off the edge of an icy road!) and “real-time serendipity.” And most of them REALLY HATE CHANGE. (Or, as Garth Algar noted in “Wayne’s World,” “We FEAR change.”

As Facebook becomes more and more changed to support its CUSTOMERS (advertisers, marketeers, and the like), will users bother to keep changing along with it?

Remember, there is at least one real competitor now: Google+.

I don’t know the answer.

But I think I know why Zuckerberg was not in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, or a similar one….

(Note added September 23, 2011: As with Janus, the two-faced Roman god of beginnings and transitions [and of gates, doors, doorways, endings and time] and with Steppenwolf‘s “Monster” [YouTube, excellent video; which just “…sits there…. watching“], Facebook stands poised to PASSIVELY collect your real-time events [what music you are listening to on Spotify, what movies you are watching on Hulu], ONE CLICK, “once upon at time,” could lead to your AUTOMATICALLY sharing MANY more REAL-TIME details about yourself. The fact that Facebook tried this and failed in 2007 and is back trying this again in 2011 [not usually the behavior of a totally-profit-driven capitalist corporation! :-) ] suggests  to me that other motives are at work, and that Facebook has “friends in high places.” Two excellent, must-read discussions of the Facebook changes are John D. Sutter’s [John seems to have become MUCH more “aware” over the last year] “With ‘real-time apps, Facebook is always watching” and Justin Brookman’s entry in The Daily Beast, “Facebook’s New Grab for More Data.” See also: Don Reisinger’s “Facebook changes creeping out some customers.” Remember – Facebook has never publicly bought into “Don’t Be Evil,” and you can learn a lot about a corporation from the company it keeps….)

(Note added September 27, 2011: And it gets worse…. Facebook is using persistent cookies that can be used to track users AFTER they log off Facebook.)

(Note added September 28, 2011: Federal lawmakers are now urging the Federal Trade Commission [FTC] to investigate Facebook’s use of cookies to provide information about users after the users log out.)

-Bill at

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