Poor Misunderstood Facebook: NOT the White Pages, NOT Google Poking Heaven
Poor Facebook! Yesterday, the blogosphere (wrong) word on the street was that Mark Zuckerberg is now the chief of “White Pages of the Web,” courtesy of Om Malik’s declaration (pre-Facebook announcement) of a Facebook “virtuous cycle.”
The Malik Facebook spin crowning Zuckerberg ruler of all things people search and people information was picked up (regurgitated) all over the word, despite that it is wrong!
As GigaOm commenter Dunc summed up:
Wow, I can’t believe such a biased article got featured on the BBC news site. As many before have mentioned, you can opt out of this searching, so what’s the big deal?
Just a sensationalist blog post that would be ideally suited to the Daily Mirror.
How so? Contrary to Malik’s over blown assertion, Facebook can not be viewed as the “White Pages of the Web” because it is not providing ANY meaningful ”White pages” information to the Web about Facebookers, as Facebook PR itself told Malik, as he himself cites:
A public search listing provides, at most, the name and profile picture of a Facebook member.
Malik may believe THAT is what constitutes a “White pages” listng, but white pages vendors do not, and neither does the people searching public.
A search for “Om Malik” at Yahoo! People Search (undoubedtly NOT “struck with fear” as Malik postulates simply because Zuckerberg tweaked his “find a friend” upsell tool) yields a full, actionable data profile: Mailing address and phone number.
What is actionable about what Mailk labels “Facebook opens up to public search”? NOTHING! A public searcher must register to become a Facebook member before any actionable contact information is, potentially and dependent upon privacy settings, available, unless a photo is all that is desired.
Facebook PR told Malik that Facebook users will be able to set their privacy options “before we allow seach engines to index these public search listings.” Nevertheless, Malik “broke” the Facebook news by announcing Facebook privacy an “illusion.”
Facebook’s public blog announcement contradicts’s Malik’s pre-announcement privacy scare:
We think this will help more peole connect and find value from Facebook without exposing any actual profile information or data.
Malik is not the only Facebook pre-briefed writer to get the Facebook people search story wrong: John Battelle also cites a Facebook PR email as backup for his Facebook props and incorrect analysis:
It’d be cool to be able to poke folks right there in Google’s result pages.
Cool? For who? NOT Facebook, that is why the supposed “big Facebook move” is but a big Facebook come on, as I analyze in Big Facebook Tease is OLD News: Google Still Rules People Search.
Moreover, it is not the Facebookers that have the most privacy concerns as I underscore in Plaxo, Marc Canter Ignore Rights of Stubborn Social Web Silent Majority
PERHAPS FACEBOOK PR OUGHT TO STOP PRE-BRIEFING FAVORED WRITERS, NOT ONLY ARE THEY GETTING THE FACEBOOK STORY WRONG, THEY ARE SETTING THE WRONG BLOGOSPHERE TONE.