Online public relations and the privacy debate
Posted by: Alex Erasmus
There have been lots of conversations recently about privacy, specifically in social media. Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and head-honcho at Facebook, got very sweaty when discussing the topic recently. If Mark Zuckerberg, one of the pioneers of the share everything world we live in is getting sweaty about ongoing privacy concerns, then perhaps we should all be worrying.
But I don’t think it’s really about privacy. It’s actually about money. And egos.
Facebook is changing the parameters it originally set out when Facebook was created. It was about sharing, but sharing with your friends, not all and sundry. But why is Facebook making everything more public (even if it denies this change) and why does it keep ‘suggesting’ a new page for us to ‘like’. From a PR and marketing perspective, I’d say it’s because Facebook wants more people to engage with brands so they can charge more money to the advertisers of these brands. And also so that Facebook’s share price is as high as possible when it eventually lists.
Social media arose because people love to talk about themselves and they love to hear what everyone else is up to. This hasn’t changed. It happened digitally because that was the latest platform available. Brands jumped on the bandwagon and realised that you could talk ‘with’ rather than just ‘at’ people. But they were, and are, still trying to sell products and services at the end of the day. Money makes the world go round and I don’t blame Facebook or anyone else for trying to make their money.
It might be a little more annoying than it was before, with regular prods and pokes to adapt your profile to include as many brands as possible, but it’s still ultimately your choice how, or if, you use it at all. And it’s still great for keeping in touch with people.
Even Twitter, which originally proclaimed it would try and monetise its platform in ‘different ways’ have now started with straight-up advertising. It’s even led to a key developer leaving the company.
So, what’s the take-out? Don’t hide your true colours. Social media is a great way to make public relations campaigns fun and useful for both the brand and the consumer. But don’t let that stop you from saying what you’re selling and where people can buy it. It’s called business.
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Great post Alex. Concerns over privacy on Facebook have been escalating lately, with lots of people discussing boycotting Facebook. I bet there are even ‘boycott Facebook’ groups ON Facebook. Facebook privacy even made the cover of Time magazine’s May 31 issue (http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1990582,00.html).
When I started looking into this I found a number of interesting alternatives. Notable examples include http://www.yuwie.com which pays users a portion of the advertising revenues, and Diaspora which is under development but makes a point of comparing itself to Facebook and promising better privacy policies and user control. If you look into the history of Facebook, it is almost alarming to find the disregard for privacy evident in Zuckerberg’s early actions.
I haven’t signed up to Yuwie, but I think the idea is interesting and perhaps presented in a more transparent and honest way than that of other social networking sites. Diaspora is one I will keep an eye on (@joindiaspora) to see how they follow through on their “privacy aware” promise.
One of my main concerns about Facebook is how difficult it is to delete your account. Facebook doesn’t actually have an option for deleting your account, only deactivating it. When you try to login after deactivating your account, you are asked if you would like to reactivate your account. This means that unless you manually delete all of your information, posts, photos, messages etc. before emailing a Facebook rep to have them delete your account, then all of this content remains in the Facebook server.
As ‘Josh’ posted in response to a blog post by Steven Mansour, “Surely there is something in the Data Protection Act which covers this. I believe that upon request, any holder of personal/sensitive data must provide you with a copy of the data and/or edit and/or delete it as desired.” Is it possible for Facebook to undermine the law by having you agree to their Terms and Conditions? By agreeing to these (which the majority of FB users do not read), are we signing away our right to any kind of control or ownership of our data? Steven Mansour’s post and the many interesting responses to it can be found at http://stevenmansour.com/writings/2007/jul/23/2342/2504_steps_to_closing_your_facebook_account
Most users seem to forget that Facebook is a business, and get up in arms about advertising and privacy and new features they weren’t warned about. Like any business, Facebook relies on customers, but as it is essentially a media company, it operates under a market model, with a dual product offering and therefore two groups of customers. There are customers like you and I who use Facebook, and then there are customers - advertisers - who pay to access us. The majority of customers like you and I are not bothered about the privacy fuss and do not appear to leaving en mass, so Facebook is free to focus their efforts on maximising profits through providing information to advertisers.
As a public relations student, I can see how fantastic Facebook can be for some organisations’ campaigns. And I totally support the public relations model of talking ‘with’ people not ‘at’ them, as you said Alex. Two-way, interactive, transactional, conversational… whatever you like to call it, I like the principle and Facebook is an easy platform to allow for this kind of communication between an organisation and its stakeholders. However, the more I use Facebook the more I see benefits for organisations and the less I see benefits for me.
Over the summer I worked as a PR and marketing intern, and a number of clients were keen on using Facebook as part of their campaigns. There are many excellent examples of integrating Facebook into communication campaigns and the organisation’s strategy, and in many cases, it is something I would recommend. But I’m not sure that’s the same environment I want to share information with my friends in.
I really value the time I get to spend with my friends in person nowadays, and I get a little offended when they end a catch-up with “Facebook me!” We are people who love stories, and love sharing stories, but are there better platforms for doing this than Facebook? You said “It happened digitally because that was the latest platform available.” I agree. Are there other ways in which you would like to see this happen?
As for Twitter, from my experience so far I know what will be public, and what will not be. There haven’t been any surprises. And I haven’t caught Twitter changing my privacy settings when I wasn’t looking to automatically make all my information public.
I’m giving my Facebook account a serious rethink. I have it set to the strictest privacy settings I can have, but I still have concerns. I’m reevaluating whether the amount/quality of use I get out of Facebook justifies the risks involved. After all, do I really need to know what hundreds of people, most of whom I rarely contact, are up to?
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