Why Facebook's Network Effects Are Overrated

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from a contrarian take on the power of Facebook from hacker Benjamin Mako-Hill: "A lot of people interested in free software, and user autonomy and network services are very worried about Facebook. Folks are worried for the same reason that so many investors are interested: the networks effects brought by hundreds of millions of folks signed up to use the service. ... Facebook is vulnerable to the next thing more than many technology firms that have benefited from network effects in the past. If users are given compelling reasons to switch to something else, they can with less trouble and they will. That compelling reason might be a new social network with better features or an awesome distributed architecture that allows freedom for users and the ability of those users to benefit from new and fantastic things that Facebook's overseers would never let them have and without the things Facebook's users suffer through today. Or it might be a sexier proprietary box to store users' private information. It doesn't mean that I'm not worried about Facebook. I remain deeply worried. It's just not very hard for me to imagine the end."

Comments

When facebook came out ...

[Taco Cowboy]

... I registered for an account

The few times I was there I felt uncomfortable

Everyone was telling everybody else everything about themselves - their name, their phone #, their address, their hobby ... everything

Maybe I'm just old fashion. Privacy for me is something very important

I haven't been to facebook for years, and I don't miss it

Re:When facebook came out ...

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a time when it all made sense. When I first signed up for facebook, it was only people at my university and a handful of other universities. People at other universities could see that you exist, and could message you. You could set your privacy so that only people from your university could see your info. This made sense in the context of not knowing what Facebook's future plans were. At the time it was a very convenient way of keeping up with people you met on campus. Honestly, facebook was ruined when they let the masses in, but it's obvious now that that was their plan all along. When they let the high schoolers and the unwashed masses in, I was reminded again of Eternal September on USENET.

Re:When facebook came out ...

[Anonymous Coward]

The IT lifers on slashdot don't get it, but the average person doesn't give a rats ass about privacy. If you do? Don't share anything of value on Facebook, just use it to interact with distant relatives, old friends, whatever. Nothing worth griping about on EVERY Facebook article posted here.

Read the EULA

[Savage-Rabbit]

Facebook doesn't own my data, I still have all my photos I uploaded

Actually by uploading your private data to Facebook you granted them a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide IP-license to use any of your stuff long as it is on the Facebook network even if it isn't posted there under your account. From their EULA:

"For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it."

Re:Data ownership

[jezwel]

Does this mean G+ might finally get some activity ? :)