I read this morning that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had said:
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told a live audience yesterday that if he were to create Facebook again today, user information would by default be public, not private as it was for years until the company changed dramatically in December.
I think that highlights the direction they will travel in over the next few months.
Why is this? Well it’s stilting growth in revenues is my guess.
Most people on Facebook have few friends, 10′s not hundreds, very few have thousands. A tiny proportion have 10′s of thousands. For most that means they can’t spread information and recommendations quickly to a large audience. Many people I know guard their Facebook friends closely viewing them as a personal group, and one to keep those social ‘exposures’ limited too because they can be trusted, right?
Suddenly in December that changed, content locked inside your trusted group wasn’t so secure although you could go and make it secure again. Most people didn’t.
My sense is that things leak from Facebook anyway, so the golden rule is never put anything on line you don’t want others to find.
As they saying goes, what happens in Vegas, stays on YouTube.
Zuckerberg’s been clear, he’d have created a more open environment if he had a chance to do it again. He will take Facebook there anyway, and the advertisers will ove him for it. Reach is vital and in a network of millions reach is actually pretty small at the moment.
Open networks are now the norm, Open-ness is still a skill to be learned by many. Intersting times.
