Facebook - Terms and Conditions mess
What is with the Facebook ‘Terms and Conditions’? The privately held company has been lately trying to manipulate the conditions with which it would hold the user information.
Facebook is growing very fast with some 150+ million social networking users gluing to it all the time. It has become a favorite time-pass for people.
Facebook has been attempting to get advertising or other forms of revenue to get profitable but so far it has not be able to accomplish that. Still it relies on VCs.
If Facebook wishes, it could use the personal information belonging to people in a manner to get enormous profits but then the next day its traffic will plunge and it will get into legal suits which is the last thing the company would want to do. So, it has been gently trying to sneak in the terms and conditions (with least furror) so that it can use the users’ personal information for business purpose.
The Microsoft advertising model over Facebook is still not working very well and is bringing in an insignificant amount of revenue.
Facebook comments:-
“Over the past couple of days, we have received a lot of questions and comments about these updated terms and what they mean for people and their information,” read the statement, which Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg expanded upon in a blog post. “Because of the feedback we received, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.”
One part of the terms is:-
Facebook’s new policy said that its right to use and modify a users’ content did not automatically expire if the user removed the information from the site.
What does that mean?
It means that Facebook will retain your (presumed) deleted personal information somewhere in the attic (archive) and could use it long long after you have forgot about that!
Facebook has been involved into users’ controversies in the past as well. In 2007 it introduced Beacon which allowed users to share actions they take on other Internet sites with users on Facebook. It was not an optional part at that time; so lately Facebook was forced to make it optional.
2008, there were demonstrations at its San Francisco office by some groups against certain ‘one-sided’ policies in its terms and conditions.
Facebook, basically, is a very good tool if used with caution and care. It could help the users to network in a very healthy way. It could be a leverage in personal and professional prosperity. One just needs to be careful about the cyber-goons who could misuse the user information. In fact, most of the times problem creators are your close-by people who know you to some extent.
Every good has its bads too! Happy social networking.
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