What is Facebook's most important asset? Easy. The 3.5 billion pieces of content that its users upload each day. That's what the company is built around. And if those users are going to carry on pumping out content, they'll have to feel comfortable with the platform. That makes trust a big issue. And privacy.
In general, individuals are producing an exponentially growing amount of data Facebook is trying to create a universe where users have control of it – so that the data keeps on flowing through its platform. "Is that correct?" asks David Kirkpatrick, author of the book The Facebook Effect, on Tuesday morning at the Munich DLD conference. "Yes," answers Mike Schroepfer, vice president of engineering at Facebook.
Making users feel more confident about their content was Facebook's main reason for bringing in new privacy settings recently. The focus was to build up trust, and to give people more control about what they publish – in short, to keep them onside and make them publish more.
The privacy of data and identity is becoming more and more of an issue as we spend more and more time on the internet. And Facebook, with its 350 million users, is one of the main players in that market of private data.
According to Schroepfer: "Facebook introduced the new privacy settings because it wants to try to give people control. There are some photos of my nieces I only want my family to see. And there are some posts that I want to tell to the whole world. Now, I have a choice."
Kirkpatrick, however, doesn't buy it, questioning Schroepfer hard on whether the users now really have more control. Did they understand what was going on?
When the settings were changed, each of the 350 million users found a letter from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on their Facebook homepage, explaining the changes. However, the default settings tend to prevail. So do people really have a choice now, or was it more a simulation of a choice? "Well, at least they have an option now," says Schroepfer.
Schroepfer has worked for Mozilla as an engineer before, and he learnt his lesson there. "Mozilla is about innovation and control," he says. Its browser, Firefox, tries to give users more options than any other browser to access the web ecosystem.
"Giving people option and choices, letting people decide what they wanted do, is important," he says. "If you publish an embarrassing post, you can delete that post on Facebook. Now, type in your name in Google, and try to control what comes back. On Facebook, your profile is constructed by you. If you make a mistake you can change it. We give the people the power to control themselves."
Facebook is giving the people that control for a good reason. It is preparing to leave its traditional platform, having learnt from Twitter not to rely wholly on its website as the centre of its business.
Recently Facebook introduced the option not only to be notified about comments via email, but to answer them via email directly – without going to the site. "It is entirely possible that there will be no facebook.com in the future," says Mike Schroepfer. The site is becoming less and less important. It is the users' stream which is the new focus. And users who trust Facebook with their content will publish more.
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