Looking for a Happy Place
Facing a complex maze of privacy options, Facebook users learned this week that they will soon be able to post a location based status update whenever they sneak into a participating McDonalds. Facebook's move into location based services (a la Foursquare) is inevitable; Techcrunch even spotted a new 'Places' tab in Facebook's JavaScript for touch enabled smartphones.
Many bloggers are pointing out that LBS is not a slam dunk for Facebook. Econsultancy looked at the McDonalds example and pointed out that the status update looked more like an ad than a friendly check-in. Facebook's demos (too old?) and its 'one size fits all' nature might be off target according to The Next Web.
The primary issue remains privacy. Facebook is a relentless volcano of privacy ashes. The New York Times published a detailed chart of all 170 Facebook privacy options and noted that Facebook's privacy policy is longer than the US Constitution. A group of students in New York found ready funding for Diaspora, hailed as a privacy respecting distributed alternative network. Facebook was in full crisis management mode by week's end, calling a top level Privacy Summit for Thursday, 4PM PDT.
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