After three days of revolt by members, Facebook's management team has decided to temporarily revert the site's terms of service to an earlier version. And while Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has vowed to create a new TOS in the coming weeks, he claims that it will be crafted with input from Facebook members:
Our next version will be a substantial revision from where we are now. It will reflect the principles I described yesterday around how people share and control their information, and it will be written clearly in language everyone can understand. Since this will be the governing document that we'll all live by, Facebook users will have a lot of input in crafting these terms.
It will take a little bit of time. We expect to complete this in the next few weeks. In the meantime, we've changed the terms back to what existed before the February 4th change, which was what most people asked us for and was the recommendation of the outside experts we consulted.
No doubt Zuckerberg and his legal team would rather avoid such a costly and time-consuming exercise. However, Facebook's audience size makes it worth the effort. The company, which claims 175 million users plus one self-made billionaire in Zuckerberg, needs to keep the community happy while it searches for a business model that works.
(Photo: Facebook)
While perception is reality, and the emotional response suggests that Facebook needs to do a better job of being consultative with its community versus delivering material edicts from on high, the truth is that the hullabaloo about Facebook’s change in Terms of Service is much ado about nothing.
We create a "snail trail" when we plug into communities online, that snail trail becomes substrate that interconnects with other users and discussion threads.
It's just not reasonable to expect that you can rip that out, creating virtual potholes in the communal space.
Also, why do we begrudge Facebook as nefarious for wanting to monetize these snail trails when we happily accept Google monetizing our traversals, web pages, images and the like? It’s just silly, in my opinion.
Check out:
Why Facebook’s Terms of Service Change is Much Ado About Nothing
(http://bit.ly/xxE4d)
For more fodder on this one.
Mark
Post new comment