• signing up on facebook
• an average user's facebook expectations ~ privacy and trust
• What's the fuss, was your uploaded and posted stuff ever really Yours in the first place?
• informative links
• Take a Poll
• googling facebook
• Facebook has a change of heart?

I have not been a Facebook user for very long. Only about, oh, six months.

For years I had been searching for old friends, wondering where they were, and what they've been up to. I joined myspace, thinking something would happen there. It seemed pretty cool, and it was. It was fun designing and "pimping" my profile page, blogging, befriending bands and personalities I thought were way cool... (The obscure ones really writing back, for real.)

But where were my old girlfriends? Looking for guy friends, piece of cake; if you search and they're out there you will find. Girl friends, on the other hand change their names, and sometimes more than once. Unless you have their old address and phone number and they still work and their parents still live there, you can seek, but you will not find.

One day I just took the leap. After multiple disappointments of searching the web for anything that would take me down memory lane, like Classmates.com, etc. I found many dead ends. I certainly did not want to pay Classmates.com, or anywhere else for that matter, to find my friends or just to be able to look at their profiles or their supposed messages to me. (Not to mention my McAfee threw up a big red flag about Classmates.com. So no.)

Deciding I should find an alternative way to connect, and deciding also that I wanted to start my own business in the near future, I decided to opt into becoming a facebook user. This would be a good form of exposure to future networking I may want to partake of. Not to mention, Ellen's on facebook!

Sign up, on facebook, was quick and easy. I felt like my information would be kept private. I felt good about it. I felt like I actually found a space where my personal information would be private to all until, and unless, I "accepted" friendship from my long lost friends, and as it ends up, my newer friends and acquaintances (whom I would not have otherwise been able to socialize with due to schedule conflicts). It gave me privacy options. Plus, it was free. So I joined.

Sure I felt a little miffed at the fact that my info had to be verified; but wasn't that a good thing? And if they were going to go through all the trouble of making sure I was legit, then they were doing that for everyone, so I wouldn't be getting a bunch of people that weren't real, or didn't really know me and hadn't heard of me, asking to be friends with me. I wouldn't come across people with a name like "soforreal" (fake pseudonym, if it's yours I had no idea, sorry.)

It was a bit difficult finding people at first. If for example I signed in as being in a particular city's network, but a long lost friend was in a completely different city, I would have to search quite a bit to find her. Facebook suggested people I might know, which helped a lot in the beginning. The more friends you find from other networks, the more suggestions are placed in front of you, so in the end you can finally find who you are looking for and they can find you. In a nutshell, there may have been some kinks, but I felt like my privacy was protected by facebook at all times, and that so was the privacy of my friends and acquaintances.

Privacy, to me, also meant that my stuff was my stuff. So to me, all my info was mine. My uploaded photos were mine. My websites and personal info were mine and belonged to me. The things I wrote and my comments, belonged to me. My "status" was mine too, right?.

from:

Terms of Use

Last revised on 23 September 2008

When you post User Content to the Site, you authorise and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide licence (with the right to sublicence) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorise sublicences of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the licence granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content. Facebook does not assert any ownership over your User Content; rather, as between us and you, subject to the rights granted to us in these Terms, you retain full ownership of all of your User Content and any intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights associated with your User Content.

I thought it was. They said so in my 2008 agreement. "We care about the privacy of our users." Sweet!

Also according to my 2008 agreement: "Facebook does not assert any ownership over your User Content; rather, as between us and you, subject to the rights granted to us in these Terms, you retain full ownership of all of your User Content and any intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights associated with your User Content."

Now, looking closer at it, I see that what they probably mean to say, based on context as it appears in the paragraphs (viewable above), is that I own the rights to me and my stuff, but not to copies of my stuff; IE. I don't really have rights over the stuff that originated as mine but are no longer mine because they are in facebook's archive.

In other words,

• My stuff that I physically, personally have... MINE
• Their copies of my stuff that they physically, personally have... THEIRS

Hmmm. Tricky.

Who, though, is really going to nitpick on stuff like this? "What would facebook want with little old Me's stuff anyway," they're going to think. Your average facebook applicant is not going to think about archives and ghost copies. After all, the world of facebook is A.O.K., right? It's safe. It's secure. It's a place to network and commercialize yourself.  Right?  Right?

Apparently even if and after you break ties with facebook, according to their new terms, they do not have to break their ties with your stuff. Take a listen to the following podcast or click on here to get to Facebook Users Angry Over Change In Legal Terms.

Getting into your facebook pages may be a bit slow and tedious for a few days. It seems that those who are as well as those who aren't members of facebook are checking out the Terms of Use, so it's a bit crowded on the facebook servers.

Once you do get in, you won't notice the new 2009 version of facebook's Terms of Use. (At least not at the time this hub is being written.) Why? It seems facebook has decided, under the circumstances, to hold off on posting the new terms. Or rather in their own words:

"Conditions d'utilisation

Close

Over the past few days, we have received a lot of feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised. For more information, visit the Facebook Blog.

If you want to share your thoughts on what should be in the new terms, check out our group Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities."

This is what they have currently posted on the top of my homepage on facebook, on the afternoon of Feb. 18th 2009, giving me the option to close the note of information.

Hopefully this is very good news and facebook will be able to come to some sort of agreement with their users. 

If you google facebook, you'll find that somewhere around fifth place is "News results for facebook." Since googling facebook is how I get onto my facebook page, I notice this every day. At least the corner of my eye does. When I do notice, however, I notice. Sometimes with a chuckle, but other times with "is facebook for real?" At any rate, facebook has been surrounded in controversy since I joined, that I know for sure.

But then, aren't most famous people?  And should you really be sharing anything in facebook that you don't want seen anyway?  It seems photos are the biggest concern amongst facebook users.  hmmm.  I wonder what we'd find in their fb albums.

Personally, I love my facebook.  I connected, I've had fun, I've shared.  I guess it's up to you to decide if facebook, or anywhere for that matter, is right for you.  There is an upside and a downside to everything, after all.

 Apparently so.  Since the writing of this hub, (perhaps not due to it, but one never knows who they influence) facebook has retracted their new policies. 

Mark Zuckerberg has even posted a blog about this and facebooks intentions for any possible future changes.  Check out this page LINK sent to me by my dear awesome wonderful hub friend Christoph Reilly.