Six Years of Making Connections
by Mark Zuckerberg Yesterday at 8:41pmToday we’re celebrating our sixth birthday, and this week there will be 400 million people on Facebook. Just one year ago we served less than half as many people, and thanks to you we’ve made great progress over the last year towards making the world more open and connected.
For reference, the current estimate for the US population is only 315 million.
I’ve had the Droid for a few days now. Here are my emerging opinions.
Things I like
Things I do not like
In normal chat/IM programs, people are known by their handles, such as “lkjsdf12398.” This is a huge, gnarly problem.
Companies have been fighting this problem for years. For example, in Apple’s OS X, the built in Address Book integrates with chat programs, allowing Mac users to view either their buddies’ fake online handles, or real life names that were entered into the Address Book.
Facebook Chat uses real names, such as “John Doe.” This is a huge win. Users longer have to maintain the mental mapping between “lkjsdf12398″ and “John Doe.” As someone who used to manually add real names to his chat programs, I would like to personally thank the employee at Facebook who realized that this application was a perfect way to leverage the social graph.
Thank you.
Google has long made it known to the public that it keeps data collected from its web operations in the highest confidentiality, and from first hand experience, I can confirm that this is true.
What does this have to do with Facebook? Recently, it was revealed that certain Facebook employees have full access to all of the information stored on Facebook. This includes, but is not limited to profile visit tracking, activity monitoring, and universal profile access. What’s worse is that close examination of Facebook’s privacy policy shows that the policy does not promise the sanctity of user data.
Some of these rumors were easily debunked. For example, Jones and Soltram of MIT stated in their 2005 paper “Facebook: Threats to Privacy,” that Facebook login information is transmitted unencrypted over the Internet. To see if this still held true in 2007, I booted up Ethereal and started capturing packets as I logged into Facebook. Sifting through the packets revealed zero instances of my password. I hope the rest of the aforementioned rumors are similarly obsolete.
As a respectable company built on privacy and trust, Facebook’s success hinges on fulfilling the privacy expectations of its millions of members. If these expectations are not met, and a viable alternative is available, the great Facebook exodus will begin.
As a company, I think Facebook represents a new hope for corporate culture. I’ve spoken with Facebook employees and they left a great impression on me. Compared to the upbeat workaholic culture at Google, Facebook definitely seemed more “fast and loose.” However, if being fast and loose means not putting clients’ interests first, the end to this revolutionary online social networking company may come to an end.
My advice to Facebook: Don’t be Evil. Show that employees do not have privileged access to the vast amounts of personal data stored on Facebook, and that Facebook does not track user behavior or profile visits in secret.
References:
Microsoft just invested $240 million in Facebook for rights to be the sole advertiser on the social networking site. Microsoft’s 1.6 percent stake would put Facebook’s valuation at $15 billion, ignoring Microsoft’s expected profits from advertising, which I am sure must have been really high, or such a huge investment would not have been approved.
Via Business Week
Facebook is visiting Columbia tomorrow!
Update: And now they have my pizza-stained resume.
K 2:29 am on November 11, 2009 Permalink
I suspect point #5 on the ‘things you dont like’ will be a big hurdle in preventing Droid from becoming popular. Apple has too much of the mindshare already
Kevin Chiu 3:03 am on November 11, 2009 Permalink
Yes, but I think companies are realizing that Android marketshare is a growing minority that will be difficult to ignore in the near future. Looking among my current iPhone apps, I note that Evernote and Dropbox Android apps are in the pipeline.
“Devices running on Android accounted for 17% of U.S. smartphone traffic, up from 13% in August.”
http://www.ismashphone.com/2009/10/admob-mobile-metrics-report-for-september-android-share-is-growing.html
James Landay 10:03 am on November 11, 2009 Permalink
I’m really surprised you don’t have larger complaints about the UI than consistency of the colors… what grade did I give you? :) Really, is it that improved over Android 1? I need to get ahold of one or can I upgrade my G1 yet?
Kevin 11:20 am on November 11, 2009 Permalink
Keywords here: “for starters”
Kevin Chiu 4:18 pm on November 11, 2009 Permalink
@James Landay
I don’t think you can upgrade your G1 unless you’re willing to install the unoptimized SDK version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ijAgr7v8Mo
Kevin Chiu 3:08 am on November 16, 2009 Permalink
@James Landay
Android 2.0 is now available for the G1 – http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/11/14/android-2-0-source-released-already-ported-to-the-g1/