For some time many sites have offered a 'Sign In With Facebook' button which allows a third party to connect to a visitor's Facebook account and post information about their activity on their site. Unlike the similar feature for a user's Twitter account, allowing access to a Facebook account will disclose far more personal information than what's provided by Twitter.
Facebook Takes Sharing Social Media to the Next Level
With 400+ million members Facebook's new web-wide feature appears poised to rival Digg, Reddit and Twitter, with the 'Like' button set to appear on sites such as YouTube, Pandora, Hulu and The Wall Street Journal. 'Liking' a web page will connect a third party (e.g. YouTube, et al.) to the user's Facebook account and post information to that user's Wall. Friends can comment and like, which will further refine the information based on others' preferences.
"People can have instantly social and personalized experiences everywhere they go," said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, during the F8 keynote. (Source: IT World, April 21, 2010)
Facebook, Privacy and 'Open Graph' API
The term 'Facebook privacy' may sound like an oxymoron, given the number of times settings and policies have been revised; but the new Open Graph developer platform seems like it will be the most invasive feature to privacy so far.
With the Open Graph platform Facebook and its partners will share data between them to display targeted advertisements and suggestions based on user-generated preferences. For example, if a Facebook user 'likes' a song on Pandora, not only will that information be displayed for sharing on their Wall but will become part of their Facebook data across their friends as well as with third party sites. Essentially, the change in privacy means that information posted to a Facebook profile from a third party will become part of the Facebook network of partners.
Facebook's New Privacy Settings
With the introduction of this new, web-wide Open Graph data sharing feature, Facebook privacy controls have once again changed. To see and edit the new settings, log into Facebook and navigate to Account > Privacy Settings > Applications and Websites, then decide whether to opt-out of allowing Facebook's to 'personalize' visits to partners' websites based on Facebook 'likes'.
In light of the new policies it's also worth considering editing the "What your friends can share about you" setting, which lets users control what information their Facebook friends can share about them on other sites with a Facebook API.
Privacy: User Beware
As more sites offer visitors the opportunity to share information across their Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Plaxo, Digg or other personalized online accounts. subscribers need to be increasingly aware of changes to privacy settings and of the sites' policies on data sharing with third-parties.
Considering the exponential growth of sites that gather vast amounts of very specific user data, what many people think happens on Facebook may not necessarily stay on Facebook.
Edmund O'Reilly - Originally from New York, Edmund moved to Australia in 2006 and works as the Creative Director at a multimedia agency in North Sydney, ...
