Facebook governance - have a say!
Well, by now the recent Facebook controversy over ownership of your content is old news so there is no need to regurtitate too much of that. What is news though (for me since I haven't bothered with Facebook for a few days) is the new notice on my homepage from Facebook that says:
Facebook is announcing a new approach that allows users to have a role in determining the policies that govern the site.Further information is available on the Facebook blog. Following the decision to revert back to the original terms of service, Mark Zuckerberg says he was "excited to see how much people care about Facebook and how willing they are to contribute to the process of governing the site." "Excited" - I'll bet there are a few more words that describe the feelings in the boardrooms and offices of Facebook and its backers when that all 'hit the fan'! Anyway - what was another publicity disaster for them has potentially resulted in something that could be tremendous for Facebook and its users - and a signal to other service providers too. From their blog:
Our main goal at Facebook is to help make the world more open and transparent. We believe that if we want to lead the world in this direction, then we must set an example by running our service in this way.Not so sure that I am completely sucked in by the open and transparent line but I'll go along with it for the moment.
We sat down to work on documents that could be the foundation of this and we came to an interesting realization—that the conventional business practices around a Terms of Use document are just too restrictive to achieve these goals. We decided we needed to do things differently and so we're going to develop new policies that will govern our system from the ground up in an open and transparent way.Sounds promising.
We're starting this off by publishing two new documents for your review and comment. The first is the Facebook Principles, which defines your rights and will serve as the guiding framework behind any policy we'll consider—or the reason we won't consider others. The second document is the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, which will replace the existing Terms of Use.Now this looks interesting....
With both documents, we tried hard to simplify the language so you have a clear understanding of how Facebook will be run.Careful now - don't get too condescending - As thousands of Facebook users have demonstrated - we're not dumb!
I believe these steps are unprecedented in promoting understanding and enabling participation on the web. I hope you will take a look at these documents, read them carefully, and share your thoughts.Now I agree with this - let the community work with the service provider on these really important issues. Mostly, since many of us have been outraged and indignant about the change in terms of service - let's not just complain. Here's an opportunity to join in, contribute and see how it goes. Great move by Facebook.
Facebook is still in the business of introducing new and therefore potentially disruptive technologies. This can mean that our users periodically experience adjustments to new products....When I first read that I immediately thought here we go again - we can expect future major mishaps from them again as they completely misread market sentiment and implement new 'Beacons' etc however, since there is a great olive branch being handed out here, maybe I should be thinking along the lines of it is great to see a company really pushing the limits to see what benefits disruptive technologies can bring. In our own realm of technologies for education, we operate under so many constraints and it is nice to be able to step out of that area occasionally to see how we can maybe adapt some of these ideas for the benefit of our own communities.
technorati tags: Facebook, ownership,social networking
