Loosing Site

Facebook are planning a redesign of user profiles this spring, aiming to make the profiles simpler and more relevant while giving a greater degree of control to the users.

Facebook Developers | Facebook Developers News via kwout

The draft design uses a tabbed layout for the wide column with the initial set of tabs for a Wall, an About page and Photos. Applications can also be set up in custom tabs, but these are configured and controlled by the user.

The design changes are intended to “align the goals of application developers with the principles of the Platform ecosystem”. This, combined with the earlier introduction of “allocations” to ration the features available to unruly applications illustrate Facebook’s strategy of ecological platform development; changing an environment in which desirable behaviours are easier and more profitable than undesirable ones.

In a recent Independent on Sunday article David Randall and Victoria Richards paint a gloomy picture of on-line privacy, highlighting a number of incidents in which employers and educators have used online social networks to gather information about their current and prospective employees and students.

Facebook can ruin your life. And so can MySpace, Bebo… – News, Gadgets & Tech – Independent.co.uk via kwout

Whilst those who brag about engaging in criminal activities on social networks can legitimately expect to have the information they’ve shared come back to haunt them; should employers, recruiters and educators assume the same rights as the police or the security services?

The terms and conditions of social networks often restrict activity to personal use only.

“You understand that except for advertising programs offered by us on the Site (e.g., Facebook Flyers, Facebook Marketplace), the Service and the Site are available for your personal, non-commercial use only.”

Facebook | Terms of Use

Any employer using these networks to gather intelligence about an employee will be violating the terms of service by gathering personal data for commercial use.

Ownership of content is generally retained by the users of social networks.

“You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.”

Google Terms of Service (covering Orkut)

In many cases media displayed in social networks are stored on separate hosting services with their own conditions and requirements, and have the additional protection of declaring Creative Commons licenses that explicitly state the media are for non-commercial use.

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States via kwout

Employers who include text and images from social networks as evidence at an industrial tribunal will be violating the copyright of the very employees they are in conflict with.  Employees who are unlikely to waive the unnegotiated (and presumably quite high) fees for the prejudicial use of their intellectual property.

Even where an image is marked as available for commercial use issues of privacy and model consent remain.

On the Texas suit against Virgin and Creative Commons (Lessig Blog) via kwout

Employers and educators who violate privacy should be aware that they may also be violating contract law and copyright law. They should be unsurprised if they face legal consequences as a result, and should budget accordingly.

The question is, who will sue first:

• individuals protecting their privacy

• content owners protecting their intellectual property rights

• service providers protecting their users and their market share

• the Electronic Frontiers Foundation, because that’s what they do

Privacy | Electronic Frontier Foundation via kwout

Facebook is introducing allocation systems to improve user experience on its platform. Earlier this month limits were placed on notifications based on the rates with which users ignore, hide or report them as spam. After receiving positive feedback for this move Facebook are now extending the allocation system to cover requests and invites.

This change will alter the application ecology, making it more likely that applications aligning themselves with users aims and goals will have more generous allocations and spread more effectively than applications that spam their users’ friends.

Application Developers will have access to User Response Metrics that indicate how their applications are perceived, which in turn influences how allocations are assigned to different functions.

Though not directly related to the current change, FaberNovel’s presentation contains an interesting, if slightly out of date, overview of Facebook. In particular slide 28 highlights the need for new metrics in social media sites.

Orkut, has introduced a new feature that increases the privacy of it’s members. Community owners can now choose whether to make their content private, so that only community members can view discussions, forums and events.

orkut Blog: Create a Private Community via kwout

This follows on from recent functional refinements and awareness raising activities relating to individuals’ privacy settings.

The change opens up the possibility of using Orkut for applications that require greater trust and security e.g. maintaining family contacts, supporting distance learning activities or organizing local clubs and societies. Its also reflects an increasing level of activity and discussion around broad issues of online privacy and ownership of social graph data.

Techdirt: Is There A Conflict Between Open Social Graphs And Your Privacy? via kwout

The whole issue is made more complex when some users’ desires for data portability conflict with other’s needs for discretion.

Facebook privacy chief: Data portability dangers overlooked | InfoWorld | News | 2008-02-08 | By Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service via kwout

Trust relationships are becoming more entangled as platforms grow in power and flexibility.

TouchGraph | Products: Facebook Browser via kwout

Facebook and Open Social applications are able to access their installer’s social graph. So, when I trust you as a friend I’m also entrusting some of my data to your applications. There are fine and evolving balances to be drawn between convenience and security that should give us a more granular choice than simply whether to be exposed or anonymous.

How do we include people who are off-line in our on-line networks? Lately I’ve seen two demonstrations of different approaches that address this problem.

These Are My Kids

These Are My Kids | Facebook via kwout

This is a Facebook application through which families can keep in touch, sharing news and photographs in a safe secure on-line environment. Family members who are offline will kept in the loop via a printing service that regularly sends books of annotated photographs to them.

LiveVote (N.B. only available in Canada)

This is a little more immediate. Free SMS text message polls and surveys can be set up using the LiveVote web site. The poll questions, options and instructions can then be:

• embedded in a blog
• printed in a newspaper
• broadcast in a radio or TV show

Results are instantly available and can be displayed in a widget like the one above.

Though “These are My Kids” and “LiveVote” involve different processes and are targeted at different demographics they both show that the junctions between different channels of communication can be bridges instead of barriers.