Jan 23 2011 – As a start-up company helping clients with email marketing and social media, I’ve been diving into Facebook full force, and I feel like I’m in FantasyLand. Social media news giants like Mashable, FacebookForum and The Next Web have helped me research the good, bad and the ugly about Facebook. This week it seems that privacy issues have hit the fore.
First, the news broke on Sunday of a hacker warning. You know those notifications you receive that a friend has commented on your post? If you click on one, and get a prompt to enter your username and password, DON’T DO IT! (See FacebookForum for the full story: http://bit.ly/giAFya).
Next, Mashable announced that Facebook will officially be sharing its users’ profile information, such as addresses and phone numbers, to third-party applications, adding that privacy experts had no small degree of concern over the matter (http://on.mash.to/hnlCgg). At this point, I was psyched and got ready to look up Mark Zuckerberg’s cell phone to discuss with him the possibilities of his hiring In Touch Promotions to provide his blog content.
Today, I saw the news first on The Next Web that Facebook is rescinding that kind offer to its app partners to share our private information (http://bit.ly/fbJOYK). I cancelled my call to Mr. Zuckerberg, but decided that my new birthday, 1/15/1905 will remain. You can wish me a happy 107th next year at this time.
And now it seems we’ve come full circle: how do you like the new Facebook profile look? Well, you can access the old profile if you’d like. Would you like to? Go back to what you’re used to? And not have to change to the new? Don’t worry, you can! All you have to do is grant the application full access to your profile information, and perhaps download a game or two. It’s a hoax and a virus. Many thanks to FacebookForum for breaking this news this afternoon: http://bit.ly/gaCiiG.
At this point I thought to myself: welcome to social media FantasyLand. Now wake up and smell the coffee!