You know, Facebook has really been bugging me recently. It’s not only the progressively disappearing privacy. The interface tweaking is driving me up a wall. I pretty much don’t post to Facebook, but I’m friends with a few folks and don’t mind reading their status updates. But I need filters. Every time I get some decent ones set up, Facebook goes and tweaks the interface and/or obsoletes my filters.
Marc Smith’s Data Banks vs Data Pimps succinctly captures my unease in a sweet analogy. Generalizing to all social media sites, he asks whether they will be like banks, honoring commitments to “security, confidentiality, and reliability” in perpetuity, or pimps, ready to violate their “relationships” at a moment’s notice for a quick buck?
I would add that along with personal data, user preferences are currency as well. Social media sites would do well to highly value that currency and not devalue it easily.