Furthermore, with the ‘Quit Facebook Day’ (organised by disaffected former users of the network) on May 31st seemingly attracting a reasonable number of quitters (somewhere in the region of 35k users), it seems that Facebook’s bad press on publicity is coming at no small cost. Of course, a network will always lose some users with changes that it makes and indeed FB will not be too troubled by the numbers just yet, though I don’t doubt they will be concerned about the negative image that all this is building.

Unsurprisingly, Mark Zuckerberg is having to answer a lot of questions on this issue – and his appearance at the All things digital conference in California yesterday is no exception (see some of our previous coverage of this event for more). Techcrunch has a decent write-up of Zuckerberg’s particular handling of the privacy issues as well as links to some handy video highlights.

With news coming earlier in the week that former US president, George Bush (junior) is the latest high profile figure to join the network, there can now be little doubt that Facebook more and more represents a rather mature and mainstream social network, and one that is increasingly being geared towards serious commercialisation – which was much less the case 3 or 4 years ago.

I expect Zuckerberg and most of those at Facebook understand that a little bad press is simply the price that will be paid for the pretty significant changes which are required to make the network a real money-spinner. As his interview at the D8 conference (linked above) shows, there is a sense at Facebook that such complaints and objections are simply a bit of initial grumbling, and have no real power to seriously upset anything in the long run, though nonetheless I for one will be keeping a close eye on Diaspora as it develops – if only for the re-assurance of knowing there is a viable alternative if Facebook’s privacy policy really starts to annoy – even more than it already does.

Dejan Levi

The first item comes courtesy of Techcrunch, who have posted some screenshots of a website designed by Mark Zuckerberg (aka Facebook creator/owner of course) back in 2001. You already know before you look at the pics that the site is going to be awful (probably wouldn’t be interesting otherwise would it?) – and indeed it doesn’t disappoint in this regard.

I suppose the nice lesson here is that no matter how awful your coding skills might be right now – there’s still hope for you in the tech world. (Also, just to be clear, Zuckerberg’s 2001 coding skills are roughly on a par with my 2010 skills – so I count myself among those comforted by this example…)

The second little curiosity is also brought to you by the good folks over at TC, by way of a short video clip of what happened when a group of friendly Slovenian hackers gatecrashed TC HQ one sunny day this week as part of a sight-seeing/coding (a nice combination always) trip round Silicon valley. The 8-minute clip is entertaining and, moreover, potentially quite useful if you require any work done as the group are offering their coding services for free to whoever has ‘a cool idea’ for the duration of the trip…

Anyway hope you enjoyed those little bits as much as I did – now get back to work ;)

Dejan Levi

The issue is not a new one in relation to FB; we all remember the disasterous and intrusive compulsory Beacon app, which monitored user spending habits and harvested the info for corporate clients. Understandably the user backlash was so swift and severe that FB quickly pulled the app – but some of the principles behind it are evident still in other practices. I decide to log in to my Facebook account to assess the effects of the current level of advertising and commercialisation on my user experience…

The first thing that should be noted is that there is not an overwhelming quantity of advertising involved with using FB. When I look at my profile I have a couple of fairly small and unintrusive ads in the right hand margin, which are directly connected to the info I have entered into my profile. In terms of ad presence and prominence therefore, things feel ok – in short it is perfectly possible to use FB and largely ignore them, making the trade-off to use the free service seem quite worthwhile.

However the issue is that in order for the advertising to be as minimal as it is, the ads need to be highly specific and targeted, as FB can raise far more revenue per pixel by using such ads as opposed to non-targeted ones. The challenge in terms of user privacy thereby clearly involves a delicate balance between maintaining revenue on the one hand, and user trust on the other.

For me personally the specificity of the targeteing is a major factor in my feeling towards it. For example, I recently added a Sopranos themed app to my profile, after which I noticed a jump in the number of adverts I was seeing that were connected to buying a new television, digibox, or tv-channel package. Fair enough I thought, if this was to mean I could use the service for free then I felt quite happy to continue to do so.

Things changed however when I noticed I was getting ads directly connected to TV shows or bands that I had listed in my ‘likes’. Suddenly I was being exposed to a much more specific level of advertising – Sopranos coffee mugs, Arrested Development t-shirts (I had listed the show as one of my favourites) and other similar items.

Once this started happening I pretty much overnight became quite wary of listing too many details that I expected would be thus used (I only have one or two shows or bands listed now) since there was something in the overly direct correlation between my profile info and the advertising that was somehow creepy and offputting.

I didn’t want to enter personal info about myself once I felt I was basically providing a free and in a way unconsenting consumer survey. Though I had had targeted advertising on my profile for a while, it had up until this point felt general enough for me to regard it as uninstusive. Now I felt as though every detail of my profile was sooner or later to be turned into ad revenue – and that this was the whole point of the FB exercise.

Ultimately, as Zuckerberg emphasises, sharing is good. But it will only continue if we trust FB not to cross the line of commercialising this sharing entirely and blurring the guiding principles of the venture. If the advertising is just a way to maintain the service and keep it free then it must be retained – but if it starts to affect the levels to which people feel comfortable to share, then it must be re-assessed.

Perhaps one solution is to remove the most specific, and hence obvious, level of advertising (the ‘Heroes’ bed linen for the ‘Heroes’ fan for example) – and retain the others, though of course there would be revenue implications in this. Regardless of this FB and Zuckerberg must know that once the line between community and commerce is totally blurred, many users (myself included) will simply migrate to another network. I don’t doubt that a healthy balance is possible – but it can only be maintained by continuously listening to the feedback of the community.

Dejan Levi

There is a now pretty well known Facebook group entitled ‘If 10 million join Marc Zomberg will bring back the old Facebook‘ that I revisited the other day to check how user levels were doing. To my surprise the group has continued to grow and now has over 2.25 million members. There is more that’s strange about this than just the wierd mis-spelling of Zuckerberg’s name in the title (some users claim it is a joke, though I’m left slightly puzzled by it. I guess it does sound kinda silly…)

The odd thing is that there are over 400 such groups on Facebook at the moment, all taking the form of a petition to bring back the previous profile design (the single-page layout). It’s gotten to the stage that there are even groups being formed to petition against the petitioners. The Zomberg group is simply the most popular one, though as a rough estimate I think the total number of ‘protestors’ (accross all such groups) is closer to the 3 million mark.

What really strikes me as peculiar is that Facebook has not done much to exlain to these people why it was making the switchover. It could be argued that since we are all using its services for free, then it owes us (and the petitioners) nothing in the first place and that if we don’t like it we can leave. This is fair enough and makes some of the more ‘demanding’ or downright aggressive of the petition groups seem pretty bizarre. Before we forget, ‘the customer is always right’ only applies if one has actually bought something.

Despite this reasoning we all know that Facebook is keen to both attract new users and keep existing ones happy, and is hardly likely to publicly use the above argument. After all most users have welcomed the new profile layouts (they have been around for over three months now) and have gotten used to the switch. I was one of those who found it awkward at first – especially as someone who uses relatively few apps, and therefore wasn’t in dire need of the upgrade – but nonetheless prefer it now.

Maybe all of the users who are so keen for a return to the old layout were, like me, also very ‘light’ users, with relatively simple profiles. However the point is that with the launch of Facebook platform the number of new apps available was increasing rapidly, and the profile rehaul was inevitable once the average profile starting showing seriously slowed load times.

The decision to split the profile into multiple tabs (wall, info, photos, boxes etc) simply represented the best way to ensure that profiles loaded faster and with fewer errors, and ensured that future growth (in terms of user activity) will not come at a cost to the networks speed and manageability. In essence the whole petition argument is redundant because had Zuckerberg not taken the decision then Facebook would slowly be clogging its cyber arteries to death with every new app or superwall comment. There is also the added bonus of minimising the amount of scrolling required to view a profile, which was starting to get very awkward and un-’userfriendly’.

Zuckerberg and Facebook did attempt to justify and explain the decision at the time; most of us understood and quickly moved on, recognising the essential nature of the redesign. However with so many still seeing it as an issue (after all this approximate 3 million represents around 1.5% of FB’s worldwide user base) then perhaps it is now time the company took a few steps to contact and inform those users once again of the reasons for the decision. The alternative is to risk losing a not insignificant chunk of them to other more ’single-page’ competitors like MySpace – something easily avoidable with a little communication.

Let’s hope Facebook decides to spread the message once more and we can finally put the debate to rest. And as for the Zomberg thing please feel free to enlighten me on the reference if I’m missing something…

Dejan Levi

Wales is partially responsible for attracting some of criticisms leveled against him. The rather extravagant use of the Wikimedia expense account, that has been both widely documented and criticised (he once, unsuccessfully, attempted to charge a $1,300 dinner for four to the account) is one factor. It has long been a tricky PR topic for Wales and Wikipedia for some time, with some former employees publishing details of careless expenditure on a few occasions in the past.

Some of these things might not sound so bad, relatively speaking, when taken out of the wider Wikipedia context (especially if compared to some of the behaviour of your average well-paid, high-flying executives and CEOs etc).

Unfortunately for Wales, the problem is all the more serious because of its context. Wales is often going to great lengths to make himself, and Wikipedia seem virtous and noble, though his expense account handling has often been at odds with these claims.

See for example this summary of his views on democracy and the internet, which he is advertising as an after-dinner topic for his guest speaker work. Below is an extract:

‘Mr. Wales predicts that the internet will democratize developing countries by making the world ‘flat,’ opening markets, promoting cultural understanding, and giving developing nations the resources they need to compete in the 21st century. Mr. Wales asserts that internet will combat stereotypes, censorship, media control, and monopolies while simultaneously allowing citizens of developing nations to have a more prominent voice.’

For many, including Seth Finkelstein, this seems frankly tiresome and slightly hypocritical for Wales. After all; it can seem a bit cheeky to claim Wikipedia is a democracy enabling, freedom-of-information spreading revolutionary creation (thus appealing to potential donors to the Wikia Foundation which keeps the whole thing running) – and then to have reports of $600 bottles of wine paid for by expense accounts leaked on the net.

Wales’s lofty claims for Wikipedia are entirely desirable and commendable in theory, and one must not be cynical in denying Wikipedia credit for what it has achieved. However in practice the juxtaposition with the negative press over expenses slightly negates the above assertions, and erodes the credibility of the effort that he otherwise works so hard to promote.

I don’t know if Wales regrets that he chose not to profit from Wikipedia by choosing to run it as a charitable venture (his official answer is that he doesn’t). Perhaps there remains a desire to know how it would have been had he done otherwise, and was now as royally rich as Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Tom Anderson (Myspace) and all the other Web 2.0 success-story characters.

One cannot blame him for failing to live up to the lofty idealistic image of himself and Wikipedia that he aspires to (he never made any vow to poverty or sainthood – as Finkelstein observes). However we must recognise that his failure to live up to this, (often in quite spectacular and headline-grabbing ways) is nonetheless hurting Wikipedia, by eroding its respectability, credibility and image.

Finkelstein may exaggerate when he compares Wikipedia to a sweatshop, (in my view his comparison is slightly offensive to people suffering in, and fighting against, the use of actual sweatshop labour), but this is separate matter.

As someone who considers Wikipedia to be a very positive thing (if it can remain independent, accurate, democratic and reliable) I believe it is paramount that Wales guards against the slips that, now he is so in the public eye, damage him not only personally but by extension (and more importantly) Wikipedia. I am one of many that wants to see it develop into the massively positive and useful, democratic, knowledge-sharing tool that it has to potential to become (and that it already is in some countries), which it can only really do if Wales rectifies the slip-ups that inevitably are seized upon by the press, and result in a real PR headache…

Dejan Levi