Facebook is now arguably the second most powerful company online after Google. To all intents and purposes, they own the information on all of their users. However, this is not a reason to avoid the social network. Lack of privacy is a part of modern day life, particularly if you use almost any online service.

So here is my simple guide for how to make Facebook safer. (The issues are based on the questions I get asked the most.)

The Issues

1. People will see all the negative or embarrassing photos of you

This is easily avoided. The privacy settings for users can be set extremely high, so that no one can tag you in a photograph without your permission and you can even limit the people who see your photos. It is generally a good idea to have your privacy settings high anyway.

In order to do this visit: https://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy

2. People will be able to find out everything about you

You only need to put on Facebook the information you are willing to share. There is no obligation to put anything you don’t feel comfortable with on your profile. Personally, I don’t have any relationship information, only where I live, work, went to school and university.

3. Children are vulnerable to bullying

This is a difficult one, because there have been some serious cases of bullying amongst school children. These aren’t due to Facebook though, the social network is merely the vessel. These dangers aren’t new since Facebook started, it’s just that now a certain amount of communication takes place online. In fairness to Facebook they are very aware of these problems and work with charities and the police to prevent future issues.

You can take steps to avoid this by ensuring that your child’s privacy settings are very high. You can also report and block users.

Here are a couple of useful guides:
Watch Your Words: Steps to Prevent Cyber Bullying
Best Ways to Avoid Cyber Bullying

If you have any other issues that you would like me to cover please just ask and don’t be afraid of Facebook. There is more to gain from being a part of the community than being outside it.

This video is amazing! Watch it:

A life on Facebook from Matteo Gracis on Vimeo.

Once the two darlings of the web 2.0 world, Facebook and Digg, in their own ways, are demonstrating that this new world of media is not as lovely as many hoped it would be. The former is controlled and stifled by its owners, the latter by its users.

Facebook

When Facebook first began it was a way for people at University to keep in touch. Initially only available to Harvard students, it gradually expanded and in 2006 it was opened to everyone.

At first the site was a breadth of fresh air after MySpace became a horror of a social networking site. Users left in droves and discovered that all their friends were now on Facebook. For years people have happily uploaded all of their photos onto the site, detailed many personal aspects of their lives and generally used it as the online version of their life. (Within my own social circle every event and meet up is organised via Facebook.)

Then Facebook realised that they needed to make money to survive, just like every business. But this went against everything their users had bought into. And here lies the crux of the problem – how do they monetize the site without irritating and losing their users?

I wrote a post a few weeks ago about the changes Facebook have made to their pages, which sums a lot of what they’re getting wrong. They are trying too hard, making too many little changes and not addressing the key problems of privacy and advertsing.

Digg

Digg became popular due to its simplicity and ease of use. When I started using the site it was to find interesting and useful articles, about technology, politics, news etc. I discovered some brilliant sites, started to make friends who gave me brilliant recommendations via the ‘Shout’ function. It gave me the kind of optimistic love I now have for Twitter – it’s why people make the internet great. They build these fantastic social sites and fantastic people find them and create great content.

Now Digg has become just another place where social media super users and spammers control the content. The most popular things online are not necessarily the best – cats dancing, a panda sneezing etc etc. This has led to Digg becoming controlled by a few sites offering similar content. You can still find gems, but this shift in emphasis has meant that many of the users that made it great are now gone.

General Trend

The internet is at a tipping point. With so many people now on Facebook the potential control is scary and they are going to have to be even more careful now that their privacy is being scrutinised and users are losing patience. While sites that aggregate content are going to have to find ways to prevent super users driving away everyone else.

Facebook have decided to take over the world. They watched Google do it and now they want a piece. They also watched Twitter rise from nothing and they want to reclaim their dominance.  If you are a Facebook user I’m sure you’ve noticed how many things have changed over the past year. It feels like everytime you get the hang of where everything is you have to learn it all over again.

Constantly Changing

In the more recent change I couldn’t find the pages I am a fan of. I could find groups and events, but I was having to search for each page separately. Eventually I found a list in my actual profile, under Info. How could Facebook have forgotten to make it easy for users to find pages?

Pages are essentially the way that Facebook could separate an ordinary user’s profile from a business or celebrity profile. This was great for businesses, because they now had much of the functionality of a group, but with their own profile. People became a ‘fan’, which enabled them to show their appreciation for a brand, while at the same time feeling like they belonged to the page.

I Don’t Want to Just ‘Like’ My Favourite Brands

In the most recent changes you no longer ‘Become a Fan’ of a page, but you ‘Like’ the page. Just as you ‘Like’ it when someone posts a picture of a cat standing on its hind legs. The sense of belonging is lost. Functionality is the same, syntax has ruined the effect.

These changes have made Facebook Pages, potentially a lot less effective. It makes it more difficult to give the impression of forming a longterm relationship with a brand. A user will still see updates in their news items, but I think they will be less inclined to contribute to the page, adding comments, photos and even video. ‘Like’ is a kind of take or leave it word, it has lost the emotion of ‘Fan’, it has ruined Facebook Pages.

Further reading:
Facebook Limits Fan Pages and Introduces Community Pages
Facebook Group vs Facebook Fan Page: What’s Better?

Facebook is a lot more difficult than people anticipate for marketing. There seems to be a myth that you can simply create a fan page and people will come. The problem is that often there is no reason to become a fan. The page is never updated and once you’ve become a fan you never hear from them again. Often people don’t have time, but usually they aren’t really sure what to do with their page once it’s set up.

Now Facebook have created new rules regarding competitions. You can’t ask people to interact with you on Facebook in order to enter a competition, they can only interact with a third party application. Gone are the days of getting more fans by encouraging them to join you in return for maybe winning something. Now marketers have to be more imaginative in the ways they get fans to sign up. In fact this may not be a bad thing, because simply building up a large fan base and bribing them to interact with you isn’t going to build up a long term relationship.

A few brands that do this really well are Howies and Staples. Howies communicate with their fans, their entire wall is a constant conversation. The fan pictures are terrific, you can tell that the people have really bought into the Howies’ brand. Staples appear to have a really strong presence and you can really see the enthusiasm people have. They’ve built some excellent third party apps as well – I Shred U enables users to delete embarrassing pictures of themselves.

If you are going to embark on Facebook ensure that there is a strategy or some kind of purpose. Is there the possibility of building up a strong community based around your products or services? Or are you running a marketing campaign that will be strengthened by a presence on Facebook? Most importantly, do you have the time to really make it work for you?