Kevin Chiu

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:

• MIT paper
• Article on recent Facebook privacy concerns

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.

I noticed this pattern on my Facebook page today:

The length of each network name is correlated with how many friends I have in that particular network.