Putting Privacy Settings in the Context of Use

A few days ago, Gilad’s eyes opened wide and he called me over to look at his computer. He was on Facebook and he had just discovered a privacy loophole. He had maximized his newsfeed to get as many photo-related bits as possible. As a result, he was regularly informed when his Friends commented on other people’s photos, including photos of people with whom he was not Friends or in the same network as. This is all fine and well. Yet, he found that he could click on those photos and, from there, see the entire photo albums of Friends-of-Friends. Once one of his Friends was tagged in one of those albums, he could see the whole album, even if he couldn’t see the whole profile of the person who owned the album. This gave him a delirious amount of joy because he felt as though he could see photos not intended for him… and he liked it.

There are multiple explanations for what is happening. This may indeed be a bug on the part of Facebook’s. It’s more likely a result of people allowing photos tagged of them to be visible to Friends of Friends through the overly complex privacy settings that even Gilad didn’t know about. Either way, Gilad felt as though he was seeing photos not intended for him. Likewise, I’d bank money that his kid sister’s Friends did not think that tagging those photos with her name would make the whole album available to her brother.

Facebook’s privacy settings are the most flexible and the most confusing privacy settings in the industry. Over and over again, I interview teens (and adults) who think that they’ve set their privacy settings to do one thing and are shocked (and sometimes horrified) to learn that their privacy settings do something else. Furthermore, because of things like tagged photos, people are often unaware of the visibility of content that they did not directly contribute. People continue to get themselves into trouble because they lack the control that they think they have. And this ain’t just about teenagers. Teachers/professors – are you _sure_ that the photos that your friends post and tag with your name aren’t visible to your students? Parents – I know many of you joined to snoop on your kids… now that your high school mates are joining, are your kids snooping on you? Power dynamics are a bitch, whether your 16 or 40.

Why are privacy settings still an abstract process removed from the context of the content itself? Privacy settings shouldn’t just be about control; they should be about the combination of awareness, context, and control. You should understand the visibility of an act during the moment of the act itself and whenever you are accessing the tracings of the act.

Tech developers… I implore you… put privacy information into the context of the content itself. When I post a photo in my album, let me see a list of EVERYONE who can view that photo. When I look at a photo on someone’s profile, let me see everyone else who can view that photo before I go to write a comment. You don’t get people to understand the scale of visibility by tweetling a few privacy settings every few months and having no idea what “Friends of Friends” actually means. If you have that setting on and you go to post a photo and realize that it will be visible to 5,000 people included 10 ex-lovers, you’re going to think twice. Or you’re going to change your privacy settings.

In an ideal world where complex access control wouldn’t destroy a database, I would argue that you should be able to edit the list of people who can see a particular artifact at the time of upload. Thus, if I posted a photo and saw that it was visible to 100 people, I could manually go through and remove 10 of those people without having to create a specific group that is everyone but the unwanted people. I know that this is a database disaster so I can’t ask for it… yet. Y’all should make large-n combinatorial functions computationally feasible eventually, right? ::wink:: In the meantime, let me at least see the visibility level and have the ability to adjust my broad settings in the context of use.

Frankly… I don’t understand why tech companies aren’t doing this. Is it because you don’t want users to realize how visible their content is? Is it because your relational databases are directed and this is annoying to compute? Or is there some other reason that I can’t think of? But seriously, if you want to stop the social disasters that stem from people fucking up their privacy settings, why not put it into context? Why not let them grok how visible their acts are by providing a feedback loop that’ll let them see what’s going on? Please tell me why this is not a rational approach!

In the meantime.. for everyone else… have you looked at your privacy settings lately? Did you really want your profile coming up first when people search for your name in Google? Did you really want those photos tagged with your name to be visible to friends-of-friends? Or your status updates visible to everyone in all of your networks? Think about it. Look at your settings. Do your expectations match with what those setting say?

Creating Fan Pages on Facebook!

Facebook Pages

We have all seen, visited, liked and even become fans of different fan pages on Facebook. For example, I am a fan of Akcent, Subway, Friends, Outfitters, BlackBerry, Dan Brown, and the list goes on and on.

Fan pages on social networks basically enable general public to interact and engage with their favorite brands, beloved celebrities and even provide them their feedback – both good and bad.

There are in fact tons of benefits of creating and maintaining fan pages on social networks by big brands and well-known celebs on Facebook and Twitter.

For now, the question under consideration however, especially for New and Upcoming Small businesses is, “To create or not to create a fan page on social networks?”

Being an ardent supporter of social networks and believing in their immense power to promote both big and small brands among the right target audience in a short span of time and least amount of spending, I fully support the idea of creating a fan page for your business on social networks!

A Disclaimer though: It DOES NOT end at creating the fan page for your brand… it is just the beginning of an altogether new and holistic brand experience for your customers out there!

As I have come to observe, creating a fan page is especially very helpful for entrepreneurs, start-ups and very small companies – those who cannot spend a lot of money in promotion of their brand on mainstream media. They can gain quick popularity and instant brand promotion in their target audience via their fan pages on popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

There are hundreds of examples of people who have benefitted so much from promoting their brands and their services via Facebook pages. I personally know of few friends who have literally flourished their photography, baking and clothes designing business to amazing level in a very short span of time. They have huge fan following which keeps on increasing day after day.

Here are a few tips for those who are thinking about creating a presence on Facebook for their new business.

First, after you have created a fan page on Facebook for your brand, promote it among your immediate friends network by asking them to join the page and ask their friends to become part of the fan page too. Now that is just as much you can do to spread the word about your brand’s presence on social networks in the beginning.

Next, content is the king and the key to your fan page popularity and it should be fresh! You cannot simply display old content i.e. photos, videos and reviews of your products and services and expect it to leave a WOW effect on everybody, every time.

Remember, any new content becomes old after some time and then it is time to bring something new on the table. So, keep uploading fresh photos and videos portfolio, reviews and testimonials about your brand and share it with your fans.

Also, giving something away every now and then is a great way to promote your brand among online users. Who does not like free stuff and giveaways and how better can it be than winning without doing much of hard work on one’s end?

I have won tons of free stuff from different brands’ fan pages and trust me whenever I won something; I only became more loyal to that brand and talked favorably about it in my social circle. Hence, whenever you can, give away something out to your fans via an online competition and make them love you and spread good word about your brand even more!

In this day and age of ‘online everything’, we are all part of the social media revolution.

The best we can get from this revolution is by giving more and the best to our online users! A fan page on a popular social network like Facebook may just prove to be a one-stop shop for all!