Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg just published an
open letter to users apologizing for the privacy problems around the new News Feed and Mini Feed features (see
Facebook’s Facelift). Zuckerberg says they were trying to provide members with a stream of information about their social lives, but failed to give enough control of these features. He also points out that Facebook’s aim is to help people share information, as well as having control of that information. Facebook’s extensive privacy settings, says Zuckerberg, are part of that mission:
We really messed this one up. When we launched News Feed and Mini-Feed we were trying to provide you with a stream of information about your social world. Instead, we did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them. I’d like to try to correct those errors now.
As a result,
Facebook have added more advanced privacy controls for the News Feed feature, as many expected they would. The new controls allow you to decide which types of stories go into your Mini-Feed and your friends’ News Feeds. The feature also lists the actions that Facebook will never inform your friends about. You can, for instance, remove profile information, photo comments, group discussions, wall posts, added friends, and your relationship status from both of the feeds. The Mini Feed also allows the removal of time stamps. And in the name of open discussion, Zuckerberg and the team will drop in to a group called “Free Flow of Information on the Internet” at 4pm EST tomorrow - they’re inviting Facebook users to join them.
Will this be enough to reverse the Facebook backlash? I don’t think so. Facebook should have simply provided an “off” switch for the feature, allowing you to disable the feeds completely. Instead, they’ve just added more confusing privacy controls that you’ll need to tweak. Opposition groups like “Students against Facebook News Feed” might declare a small victory, but I don’t think this battle is over yet.
(hat tip to
Adam)
If you’re not reading this post on http://www.web2.0blognetwork.com, we’ve got a problem.
Actually, we noticed the problem yesterday. Seems like someone has been scooping up the RSS feed for Web 2.0 Blog Network and ‘repurposing’ it on another site - without attribution and without permission.
Now, of course it sounds like we’re getting snippy. And we are! Who wants to spend time crafting great blog posts, only to see them copied elsewhere?
The currency of Web 2.0 is attention and Google-juice (or Yahoo! juice, if you’re into that). We went searching for some blog postings about RSS etiquette, but most of them have to do with attribution - where you summarize or quote a few lines, then link to the original.
Steve Rubel wrote a great piece about Blog Content Theft, which will continue to be a problem as long as a) it makes money for the thieves, and b) advertising networks turn a blind eye to it.
So, if the blog you’re reading this on is not the Web 2.0 Blog Network, why not drop them a line and tell them what you think of RSS scraping?
[Syndicated from: Web2.0blognetwork.com]
The birth of Web 2.0 has brought about several RSS 2.0 services and applications that are currently available to users interested in unique RSS feed services and features related to Web 2.0. The following list describes and links to many of the popular RSS 2.0 services.
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