Musings of a Marketing Maven

I’m delighted to get back some con­trol over my pri­vacy set­tings in Face­book. Unlike Facebook’s founder, I believe I own my rela­tion­ships, and I should be in com­plete con­trol over who gets to see what.

Hav­ing said that, I’m upset that Face­book forces me to waste so much time mon­i­tor­ing my pri­vacy set­tings and pro­file options. And just when I think I’ve got it under con­trol, they go and change something.

I was shocked to learn (via the NYT) there are >50 places to tog­gle spe­cific pri­vacy set­tings in Face­book. I’m still over­whelmed at the com­plex­ity revealed in the May 12 New York Times’ info­graphic about Facebook’s pri­vacy options. If it wasn’t obvi­ous before, this info­graphic makes it clear that Face­book sides with the adver­tis­ers’ needs over those of the mil­lions of peo­ple who entrust their per­sonal infor­ma­tion to Face­book pages and friend­ship networks.

Speak­ing of complexity…

And then there are the appli­ca­tion set­tings, espe­cially if you want to block unwanted apps or games that may be mean­ing­ful to your friends, but not to you. Far­mville addicts with noth­ing bet­ter to do can clut­ter up your wall really quickly…

It took a few days, but I’ve finally learned how to block the unwanted posts about hun­gry, lost or neglected animals.

Sigh. It shouldn’t be so hard…

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