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The Days of our Facebook: How Love Moved to Hate
Written by Allen Stern - December 2, 2007
It's always amazing to me to watch how quick the Internets shift on a product, service or person. One day it's love, the next day it's hate. It seems that we are in the hate portion of Facebook these days. Let's take a quick look back at the past few months for Facebook:
May 24, 2007
Facebook launches Facebook Platform in San Francisco in front of nearly 1,000 bloggers, journalists and developers. Facebook called the Google killer, the next Web, G-d. Applications work overtime to create Facebook versions of their apps and the press releases continue like mad over the Facebook app releases.
August 23, 2007
The WSJ reports that Facebook is working on a new advertising project to revolutionize how ads are served to Facebook users. Mild concern but very few details.
August 27, 2007
Facebook changes the way it lets apps speak to profiles to curb abuse. Appears the top applications spammed users to get the counts they did. Questions arose whether the top apps should be able to keep the users they had, but were left alone in the end.
September 17, 2007
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announces fbFund, a program to offer monies to developers who create Facebook applications. Developers excited and begin sending in applications via email (WTF?). Allen worried about this as to how they will manage the requests.
September 21, 2007
Google holds confidential meeting about opening it's technology to developers. It's since released and is named OpenSocial and some wonder if it was a response to Google being scared of Facebook.
October 8, 2007
Facebook takes a mulligan, requires all developers who applied to the fbFund to resubmit. Allen to say, "I told you so".
October 24, 2007
Facebook takes Microsoft's money - $240 million on a $15 billion valuation.
October 30, 2007
Google's OpenSocial goes live - blogosphere lines up in sheep formation and moves from Facebook camp to Google camp.
November 6, 2007
their revolutionary advertising platform Beacon. Shortly thereafter, backlash begins around privacy concerns.
November 21, 2007
A variety of Google'rs moving to Facebook causes alarms to go off.
November 28, 2007
BusinessWeek reports that Facebook is getting ready to announce Beacon changes based on user feedback.
November 29, 2007
Facebook's Beacon advertising platform moves to 2.0 based on user outrage over privacy concerns.
November 30, 2007
Facebook picks up another $60 million from Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing.
December 2, 2007
Coke backs out on Facebook ad deal.
Summary
If you remember anything I have shared since CN began, it's the line from the Honeymooners:
You better be very nice to the people on the way up... because you will see the same people on the way down.
Is Facebook headed for doom? Certainly not. Is it time to suck up and apologize and not act like some mythical g-d like figure? Yes. Let's watch how the pendulum swings for the balance of 2007. It certainly seems like it's swinging further out on the "hate" side each day the last few months.
Anne has already called 2008 the year of the business network. A bit early for 2008 predictions but I can't disagree. Perhaps the big winner out of this year was LinkedIn and MySpace.
Please add in the dates and events I have missed - thanks!
Our Partners
I think they need to be open about these things. If they put their hands up and just said oops sorry we screwed up a little accept our apologizes and help us figure out how we can avoid doing this again they would be getting better press.
Where do you see this going Allen? up or down for them? Have they turned into the MS of social networks? or can they do an apple and win people back with some radical design?
Darren - it really depends on where the sheep lords move it - there seem to be a few sheep lords who can shift what the public thinks about a company relatively quickly.
Personally I think Facebook needs more senior management who get out into the public eye. Get an interview on CNBC, etc. to speak about where things are and where they are moving. The days of flip flops are over.
Remember the DoubleClick fiasco of 1999, when 10 states and Elliot Spitzer came down on them for merging browsing data with PII?
(see http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=1455141)
Isn't this what Beacon is doing? If Facebook isn't careful, they're going to be called Spyware 2.0!
How some thing that was so good turn so bad all comes back to money.
Howtobelike.com
It always boils down to money. Once money jumps into the picture, people think differently.
Yes, money does make the world go round. I guess well just have to stay tuned to all the happenings around another social media giant.
Just like all companies and investments, when things get boiling hot, you know it's hit is peak and is on the way down.
-Brad
Sweater Puppies
I think the real issue here is the privacy issue. When Facebook changed on September 5 to make it easier for users to keep track of their online friends, the company received a wave of unanticipated protest. Facebook added a "news feed" feature that automatically alerted users when their friends made changes to their online profiles. But many users called the new feature an invasion of privacy, saying it promoted stalking.
I think most of the popular social network sites are allowing their members to post too much personal information. Many of the members on these sites are unaware of the possible safety issues (spammers, online predators, identity fraud, etc.)in regards to publicly displaying their personal info.
I recently discovered and joined a social network, that not only protects the members personal info but is also family-friendly. The name of this site is Our-Social.com
Yes, a key concern is privacy. But there lies the paradox, social networking by definition is about making connections and sharing some kind of data. It's how to control the flow of this data that's the issue: Is Facebook Evil? privacy leaks, data flows and conspiracy theories
It's kinda funny how fast these things happen, yesterday everybody was lovin facebook and now it's the opposite, that's the beauty of the internet.
FaceBook will go down in history as the second BlueMountain.
http://smartstartup.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/10/its-deja-vu-all.html
People using Facebook will come to rue the day that they went open kimono on it.