Posted in
Social Media
One of the cornerstone principles of Web 2.0 is empowering the customer/user to become truly a part of your online experience, not just a spectator. This is a powerful engagement tool and can build strong, sustainable value for your company while making users feel as though they are important to your business. This enhanced value can also deliver stickiness. However, as with most relationships, there is an honesty, courtesy and trust that you are hoping to build and leverage. Users are hoping for it too at varying levels.
Facebook is struggling with this very issue. They want desperately to leverage the content that users are posting on their service while still giving users control over what is shared. They also want to lean into some of the behavior models that Twitter has fostered such as "following" other's messages. Confusing privacy settings are, in their thinking, preventing users from sharing openly more of their content to larger audiences. The dilemna is that Facebook is not adept at rolling these changes out to users and earning their buy-in. They tend to make changes to their policies somewhat quietly and then the blogosphere tips their hand for them.
One of the cornerstone principles of Web 2.0 is empowering the customer/user to become truly a part of your online experience, not just a spectator. This is a powerful engagement tool and can build strong, sustainable value for your company while making users feel as though they are important to your business. This enhanced value can also deliver stickiness. However, as with most relationships, there is an honesty, courtesy and trust that you are hoping to build and leverage. Users are hoping for it too at varying levels.
Facebook is struggling with this very issue. They want desperately to leverage the content that users are posting on their service while still giving users control over what is shared. They also want to lean into some of the behavior models that Twitter has fostered such as "following" other's messages. Confusing privacy settings are, in their thinking, preventing users from sharing openly more of their content to larger audiences. The dilemna is that Facebook is not adept at rolling these changes out to users and earning their buy-in. They tend to make changes to their policies somewhat quietly and then the blogosphere tips their hand for them.
The latest example is a change that makes your uploaded photos available to third party advertisers. What is the benefit for me and why would I want this? Facebook Team - tell me. Otherwise, I will turn off the proper settings as quickly as I learn how to do so from my Facebook friends. The seven (7) steps that it takes as of this writing are shown here in this image. Should you prevent photo sharing with advertisers? That's up to you, but I personally would like to have been sold on the benefits before they took liberties with my content. It's that critical balance of being led to believe that you have control over your content, but have decided to share, versus the loss of trust when you learn that you have little control over who sees your content unless you constantly monitor the privacy policy and then find the buried settings quickly. In my version of Mozilla Firefox, the options mysteriously didn't even appear. I had to launch IE to make the change.
You can decide what you want to do with these settings for yourself, but the thought I leave with you is that it is critical that once you invite users to become an integral part of your offering, you need to honor not just the written agreements, but also understand and respect the implied agreements that ensure a trusted relationship. The penalty is that your audience can break up with you.
