Facebook Users Now Wide Awake ... and Wary

It's becoming clear that in changing its Terms of Service to claim it owned user content (and having then to change its TOS back), Facebook has awakened a sleeping giant: its own user base, which suddenly seems scarily aware of the sanctity of its own data. It probably won't go back to sleep any time soon.

I could have written that paragraph last week, but I'm actually basing it on the now 1,000-comments long string that follows Facebook founder Mark Zuckenberg's post on the company blog yesterday titled, "Governing the Facebook Service in an Open and Transparent Way." In it, Zuckerberg comes to the stunning realization that: "Our main goal at Facebook is to help make the world more open and transparent. We believe that if we want to lead the world in this direction, then we must set an example by running our service in this way." (Let's pause for a minute and ponder why it is that Facebook didn't already realize that before the TOS flap ... OK, time to move on.) He then introduces the Proposed Facebook Principles and the Proposed Facebook Rights and Responsibilties which have an open comment period through March 28. You can go read them if you want, but frankly, the comments are much more enlightening. Though there are many that offer praise, here are a few I culled from Zuckerberg's post that highlight the deepening concerns of Facebook's user base (apologies for iffy spelling and grammar):

"my music videos of me singing is mine,its not urs,you dont own my imformation, like my name and my contact imformation on facebook,i copy right my stuff as well,so if you want trouble facebook,ill see you in court"

"Glad you reversed your position as was considering closing my account if private information became a public for sale commodity. My private data is mine."

"My credulity ended when you said 'Our main goal at Facebook is to help make the world more open and transparent.' There's no evidence to suggest this is really your goal, and not nearly enough trust to get me - or most others - to believe as much.

However, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that your main goal is to make a profit by acquiring subscribers' information and selling it as detailed demographics to companies who are hungry for marketing information."

Since it was posted yesterday at 2:20 p.m. (Pacific time, I believe) the Zuckerberg post has garnered almost 1,000 comments. The Facebook group created around the proposed principles is at more than 8,000; the one around the proposed rights and responsibilities, 7,750.

While those numbers represent only a tiny fraction of Facebook's 175 million users, this is just the tip of the iceberg. If you follow the logic that the best way for Facebook to make money is to leverage the data from its user base, that idea has just been severely hampered. Now, its users are wide awake and worse -- they're wary.