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04.29.10 Facebook Adds Pandora And Raises Flags On Privacy  By Robert ScobleIf the end of privacy is so evil, so awful, so unthinkable, then why am I liking the new Pandora so much? See, in the past three days since Facebook announced major new changes to its social contract with all of us, I've been able to study my friends' personal musical tastes in a way I couldn't just four days ago. Here, come on over to the new Pandora on my screen. I click on "Friends' Music" and now let's look through what I can see. I see that Aaron Roe Fulkerson, MindTouch's Inc founder and CEO, listened to Toad the Wet Sprocket. I bet he didn't quite realize that I'd be able to see that a week ago. I see that Adrian Otto, chief of research at the Rackspace Cloud (where I work at), listens to Kenny G. I bet he didn't quite realize that I'd be able to see that a week ago. Aside: Kenny G, really dude? Heheh. I see that Alan Cooper, father of Visual Basic, and head of a famous software design studio that bears his name, listens to the Barenaked Ladies. I bet he didn't quite realize that I'd be able to see that a week ago. Should I keep going? I have 1,300 friends over on Facebook and a lot of them use Pandora. To me this is freaking awesome. I have found more music in the past week than I've found in the past year. Oh, yeah, and you can see my own account and see how my musical tastes are changing thanks to this new feature. But, on the other hand, this new feature has heralded a new age where we move closer to the end of privacy. While listening to music that now is shared by all my friends I've been reading thousands of words about how Facebook screwed its contract with us to keep our stuff private. Here's one thread from DeWitt Clinton that talks about why he deleted his Facebook account. Here's a story on Techcrunch about a bunch of Google employees leaving Facebook. And finally, here's yet another thread, started by Louis Gray, about those employees leaving Facebook (in the comments there I lay out why Google's employees made the wrong decision). If you read those posts - and all the comments in them - you'll see that there's a lot of people who are very disappointed with Facebook's moves pushing us all to be more public. Personally I have not taken a good stance on this lately in public. First, what has been my public stance? Privacy is dead. Why did I take that stance? Because, personally, I'm bored with the discussion about privacy. Why am I bored? Because the people who are against having their previously-private stuff shared with the world (whether it was when Google Buzz shared my email connections that I made in Gmail with everyone, or it was when Facebook forced everyone to accept being public and to reconfigure their privacy settings and, in some cases, taking away a few ways to keep their stuff between them and their friends) don't discuss is my Pandora example above. They don't admit that there's a lot of goodness that comes from pushing us to be more public with our lives. The truth is I - as a user - get more features everytime the industry moves us toward a more public world. Continue reading this article. About the Author: Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net's Vice President of Media Development. |
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