Advertisers Should Wait for Facebook to Cleanup It’s Privacy Act
The news for Facebook over the last couple of weeks was almost all bad. US Senators called on Facebook to clean up it’s privacy act. Facebook let private chats between users be seen by other users not involved in the chats. The Electronic Freedom Frontier published a timeline of Facebook’s privacy policies showing them giving more and more user information, that used to be private, to just about anyone who wants it. ZDNET wondered publicly if Facebook’s privacy or lack there of might turn Facebook into the next AOL or Myspace.
The question any company considering advertising on Facebook should be if they can afford to have their brand linked to Facebooks reputation. At the moment, we’re advising our clients to put their Facebook campaigns on hold, and new advertisers to wait until Facebook cleans up it’s privacy act. Advertising and building trust through advertising is tough enough. When a company advertises on a social media site like FB they hope to be associated in the same sphere of trust as family and friends. Right now on FB they’re getting anything but that.
Our hope is that Facebook will do a turn around on their privacy policy and hold user’s information safe. Now is the time for them to step back from the direction they’ve been headed in. Make a formal and public apology and accompany that apology with not only a new restricted privacy policy, but a user interface that makes restricting your information easy.