Facebook::privacy concerns::new privacy settings

I am a Facebook user. I like my privacy, or at least the illusion I choose to accept that there are things I can control the access to that I decide to place on the internet. Now I read that there is this big flap concerning the privacy settings on the Facebook site. Privacy concerns are nothing new for this social networking site with a reputed 400 million users. But the question is can you have real privacy and should you expect it from a site like this?

Many people use Facebook as a search engine marketing aid, another stepping stone in the pantheon of business internet marketing. It is simple enough to accomplish this if you can just understand the intricacies of social netwrok software. Facebook is a great application to experiement in due to the breadth of its exposure on the internet and in the media.

In this day of ever increasing demands on our limited resources everyone seeks a small business opportunity or the answer to the question how to make money. Facebook has the tools and opportunities out there to do just that if you can understand where the pitfalls lie.

Any internet business has a potential for criticism since its audience has come to expect and enjoy the impossible. Admit it, twenty years ago this was some unfathomable fantasy, being able to do all the things that are routine today like you do on Facebook.

Computer games have reached a new plateau thanks to Facebook. With games like Farmville you can have unlimited friends help you out to achieve unlimited success. It is basically a matter of how much risk you can comfrotably assume.

As I listened to a story on NPRs All Things Considered about a new roll out of security features, I was struck by the simple notion presented by the female anchor to the creator of Facebook, Mr. Mark Zuckerberg. This anchor asked why the default setting could not be the most restrictive privacy setting and let the user adjust to a looser setting from that. To me it seemed a reasonable approach to a vexing problem. I wish Facebook had done this from the genesis of this application as it would have prevented the security issue I experienced.

Shortly after I joined Facebook and created my account, I started adding the people I recognized, eager to connect with some I had lost touch with. To my surprise, within two weeks my account had been hacked and taken over by another who chose to keep my name, but put a different picture in the place of the one I selected. To all my friends this seemed legitimate.

At that time I was an eager Facebook patron and accessed the site often, so I identified this impostor immediately. At once I reported this breach through the complex maze of notification processes prescribed by Facebook and waited for a response. After five days I simply created a new account and let all my friends know what had happened. It was nearly thirty days before Facebook officially answered me to say they could not really help much.

So why did I join Facebook? I was intrigued by the idea I could re-establish communications with friends that have moved out of my immediate vicinity. There are people you just like to keep up with but due to the changes in your life you cannot always do this easily. Facebook is a nice platform for this endeavor. I have successfully tracked down a few dozen old school friends who are out of my geographical area.

I also created the account to assist my children and other family members who were involved in the wildly popular Farmville game. If you don’t know, and there are very few Facebook users who do not, the Farmville game is based on getting your friends involved as neighbors to help you grow your farm. I enjoyed this in the beginning, but eventually saw how time consuming it could be and am now letting my farm sit idle for the time being.

So if you decide to try one o the applications advertised on Facebook such as Farmville you are presented with a question that says: Allowing (new application name) access will allow it to pull your profile information, photos, your friends’ information and other content it requires to work. Is it just me or is this way too vague to give you comfort about the potential risk to the security of not only your data but anyone you have as a friend on Facebook? What exactly are we giving access for? I think one way to assuage the concerns over privacy would be to spell this “friends’ information” and “other content out more clearly.

Sites like Facebook, MySpace and the like allow you to keep in touch with others no matter how far flung across the globe they are. However, with this type of platform you have to accept some amount of risk to your privacy and security of information. Many people are so free with their data that they hardly care what happens. I am not among that number.

I understand there is a myriad of settings on Facebook to limit your risk and it is the user’s responsibility to learn how to best use them. I am okay with that and do try to negotiate the words and controls for the best possible result. Invariably however the risk will remain to some degree.

Currently I am enjoying a new internet site called Hub pages. This site allows you to post you new writing contributions to Facebook where it can be accessed by all your friends. Currently I only know of two or three who actively follow my writing through Facebook, but it is posted on there for the other 130 odd friends to access at any time and any potential traffic makes the availability of a social networking site t share your efforts worthwhile.

The reason I will continue to try to work within the Facebook website is that Hub Pages success is anchored in the amount of views your writing receives. As previously mentioned, Facebook has 400 million users. No I do not realistically expect all 400 million to stop by my humble site, but some tenth of a percentage of the total would be a welcome fraction.

I am still learning about web marketing and lots of good knowledge comes from analyzing the way Facebook acomplishes this task. Theri online marketing gives me plenty of ideas on how to make positive changes to my internet experience. The online advertising changes periodically to ensure fresh content each time you come on to the site.

I have shared over fifty articles from Hub Pages onto Facebook with little more than a simple click. Today, for the first time, I was asked to enter my Facebook username and password before I was able to share the link to my new work. I am comfortable with that as it shows there is some higher level of security thinking in play here. It will take some time to investigate all the new safeguards, but I am hoping we will find them to be answers to our privacy concerns

Yes, of course. People are into Facebook up to their eyeballs and there will only be a marginal few who jump ship over this flap. As we become more technologically affluent we see that hiccups to any man made system are inevitable. If the application is vital enough, you will adapt to the concerns and overcome them. Mr. Zuckerberg and his team are an excellent example of this strategy. They responded to the clamor of their faithful legions in a reasonable amount of time and will roll out the new settings within the next week to ten days. Hopefully all Facebook users will see the worth of the e enhancements as Mr. Zuckerberg and team intend. With a waiting audience larger than the population of the United States, Facebook should be willing to bend over backwards, forward or in any direction to meet its customer’s expectation.

 Writers toil endless hours trying to create something their reader cannot put down, or stop reading. As such, they have little in the way of confirmation that their thoughts and arrangement of letters amount to nuch. This is your opportunity to attend to the writer's need for feed back. If you take the time to read, spend another couple of minutes commenting on the hub. It is much appreciated!