Small Business Internet Marketing 101

Facebook Privacy Issues Could Spell Disaster for Project Titan

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There's been a ton of media attention, both mainstream and online, about the changes Facebook recently made to their privacy settings and policies.  It seems that Mashable has at least one article about Facebook privacy almost every day.  Time Magazine is bringing Facebook privacy to its readers as a front page story. The flurry of media attention seems to be mostly negative with no ray of hope anywhere in the near future for Facebook.

One topic that's been overshadowed by the larger privacy issues is a Wall Street Journal report that Facebook, along with other social networks, was caught sending user data to advertisers.  According to the WSJ article, the information that Facebook, and other social networks, have been sending "could be used to find consumers' names and other personal details."  While this practice has been defended by these companies, it should raise some serious concerns for the companies' subscribers.  First, it strengthens the case for those consumers who are hesitant to embrace social networking sites because they don't want the entire world to have access to their personal information.  Second, it opens subscribers' information to a larger group of companies and individuals who, while they may have the best of business intentions, could abuse the subscribers' information and flood them with irrelevant content.  Finally, it could scare subscribers so much that they actually start a mass exodus from these social networking sites.  In fact, this last point is highlighted further by several studies that show people are considering this option.

This practice, in our opinion, could spell the end of Facebook's Project Titan before it even launches.  In February, TechCrunch ran an article that highlighted Facebook's Project Titan, which is being tabbed "a full featured webmail product."  Subsequent articles related to this development focused on how this project COULD be the end of email marketing, as well as how to prepare for the potential of such a solution.  The recent revelations brought to the forefront by the Wall Street Journal could doom Project Titan for 3 simple reasons.

1. There are already multiple full featured webmail products available to consumers.  Many of these consumers use multiple products to try and avoid the flurry of spam that is still received via email despite the Can-Spam Act.  While Facebook would have an inside track to consumers' information, and ultimately greater control over who has access to that information, the practice of sending user names and ID numbers to third party advertisers could allow these outside parties the opportunity to sell pseudo Facebook email lists to list houses for a pretty penny.
2. While Facebook, and other social networking sites, will defend the practice highlighted in the WSJ article; it still raises serious concerns about subscribers' privacy for Project Titan.  If Facebook simply uses vanity URLs as the basis for creating email addresses as some have speculated, list houses and spammers could very easily build their own Facebook email databases and start sending spam email to Facebook users.  By the way, my Facebook email if Project Titan launches could be chrissstone@facebook.com.  If Facebook is sharing subscribers' user names and IDs, as is reported, what's to stop them from selling their email database to these same third-party advertisers?
3. Despite users' love of Facebook, and other social networking sites, they still want to keep their personal information private.  Hence, the recent backlash from mainstream and online media outlets.  Users are generally willing to deal with advertisements because they can teach themselves to block out the messages, just as they have with traditional forms of advertising.  If, and I stress if, Facebook continues the practice of sending user information to third parties, users could look at a Facebook email address as another source of spam email.  If a Facebook email address is viewed as a "spam catcher", Project Titan could surely be irrelevant within a short period of time.

At the end of the day, no one knows exactly how Facebook will amend its recent privacy changes. As this post is written, Facebook is briefing Congressional staffers on the changes to the changes it's already made in light of the media attention and subsequent public outcry.  Project Titan has probably been put on the very back burner until Facebook can overcome all the negative media attention.  This is a good thing for an email marketing agency because it's one less potential opponent to the overall success of their email marketing efforts.