Facebook Losing More Than Face

Despite all those people who honoured May 31st 2010 as Quit Facebook Day – well, 31,000 people, maybe not an enormous dent in the 500 million users Facebook recently claimed – Facebook marches on. Clearly they're doing something right. But what?
It's probably not the personal charm of founder Mark Zuckerberg, who when he's not being noticeably evasive about Facebook's stance on privacy is trying to live down referring to some of his early, over-trusting customers by a phrase I don't feel it necessary to include here.
It's clearly not the company's demonstrable commitment to taking exhaustive measures to keep its users private data secure. While it might be unfair to blame Zuckerberg or his company for the appalling action of one Ron Bowes, described as an "online security consultant", who posted a file containing the personal data of 100 million Facebook users on Pirate Bay, their reaction – "no private data has been compromised" – is instructive. Strictly speaking, FB is correct: these data are not private, because they were not protected by the stricter privacy settings that are available to cautious FB users. But…

Did the individuals concerned expect some self-serving, self-publicizing "researcher" to come along and funnel their data into an easily searchable format on an all too public site? I doubt it.
Did they realize that their data was even (continue reading...)