Task Force on Social Networking Software

Recently online privacy and social networking worked out some growing pains as Facebook tried out a new revenue stream.

Basically the service, called Beacon, connects an advertiser to ones facebook ‘friends”.

David Weinberger, from the HuffingtonPost.com describes it well in his post Facebook’s Privacy Default.

The new ad infrastructure enables Facebook to extend their reach onto other companies’ sites. For example, if you rent a copy of “Biodome” from Blockbuster.com, Blockbuster will look for a Facebook cookie on your computer. If it finds one, it will send a ping to Facebook. The Blockbuster site will pop up a “toast” (= popup) asking if you want to let your friends at Facebook know that you rented “Biodome.” If you say yes, next time you log into Facebook, Facebook will ask you to confirm that you want to let your friends know of your recent rental. If you say yes, that becomes an event that’s propagated in the news feed going to your friends.

You can understand Facebook’s perspective here, now that they have created this great service, how do they make money?I think Facebook would argue that they don’t send personal information to the companies so they are protecting user privacy. On the other hand, users might argue that just because they buy something from Overstock.com this does not represent an endorsement of the website.

Faced with an online user protest, Facebook has changed the controversial service (see Privacy concerns prompt U-turn at Facebook). Now users have to opt ‘in’ instead of opting ‘out’. This brings up some challenging questions that I think speaks to the trepidation that many librarians feel about public social networking sites. After all, if you signup for a ‘free’ service can you really blame the company for trying to make money off of you? Or should sites like Facebook been seen as a hybrid public service (akin to Google) and if so how are they supposed to know what acceptable business behavior is?

PS - Looking for MLA groups on Facebook try:

Medical Library Association’s Technology Trends
http://uva.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2464357736

Leadership and Management Section of the Medical Library Associationhttp://uva.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2523367558

MLA Social Networking Software Task Force
Medical Library Association (unofficial)http://uva.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2224177377

Educational Media & Technologies Section of Medical Library Association
http://uva.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2810070861