I’ve been following the various controversies surrounding Facebook lately. While Facebook is a giant with over 400 million users world wide, sometimes these controversies make way for smaller companies. This past weekend, I heard Leo Laporte’s show on XM radio. Leo was talking about KNOI’s Facebook page being disabled because of statements that they made about the privacy issue controversies that always seem to plague Facebook. Leo Laporte has deleted his Facebook page as a result of the controversy, and was actively promoting May 31st as Quit Facebook Day.
To his credit, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook had a timely response to the flap that was going on. According to Zuckerberg, “Facebook missed the mark”, and has vowed to make the controls stronger and easier to use. Will everybody get this message? Probably not. Will we see Facebook make more privacy policy changes that agitate their user base? I’m guessing that we will continue to see these type of blunders from Facebook. Will users forgive Facebook? Some will, some won’t.
Personally, I find Facebook to be an excellent tool for keeping in touch with friends and associates. Do the issues that are popping up bother me? Not too much. Not enough for me to quit using the tool. In light of the fact that some people may quit or may look for other tools to use, I believe that there will be opportunities for start-ups and companies that have a smaller market share to capture some of Facebook’s constituency. One such company is Diaspora, who is certainly taking advantage of the bad press that Facebook has received.
Diaspora’s software will be an open source project that allows users to customize it and host it on their own servers, revealing as much or as little information as they choose. The four young programmers that have been building Diaspora have a dream: To get Diaspora in the hands of every man, woman, and child at summer’s end. September 2010 will signify the release of the project in its first iteration, fully open-sourced under the AGPL.
As a proponent of open-source software, I will be checking out Diaspora’s software to see what it can do. I will also be paying careful attention to the privacy policies of social networks that I use. I’d like to add that companies come and go. I’ve worked for Fortune 500 companies in the tech sector that seemed like they would reach the stars, but due to management mistakes, complacency, and a host of other issues they eventually failed, being sold for pennies on the dollar. Although, when these companies fail, they often make room for new companies and a spurt of innovation, keeping the tech world interesting.
Monique