SmartPulse — our weekly reader poll in Smartbrief on Social Media — tracks feedback from leading marketers about social media practices and issues. Paul Chaney, Internet marketing director for Bizzuka, author of “The Digital Handshake,” and member of the SmartBrief on Social Media Advisory Board, helps create the questions and analyzes the results. We run the poll question each Wednesday in our e-newsletter and feature Paul’s analysis on this blog.
Last week’s poll question: Facebook now reports having in excess of 350 million members worldwide. This expansive growth led CEO Mark Zuckerberg to announce recently that changes to privacy settings were in the works. Those changes have now been rolled out. As a result, do you plan to make changes to your privacy settings?
- I’ve already made changes to my privacy settings, 32%
- I plan to make changes to my privacy settings, 27%
- I have not given it much thought, 20%
- I’m not a member of Facebook, 13%
- I do not plan to change my settings, 7%
“Any time Facebook makes any changes to its platform, the result is usually some type of upheaval. That was true when it introduced the Beacon advertising component, when it made changes to its terms of service agreements and, more recently, when it changed the way status updates are rendered in the news feed. It’s not that every decision Facebook makes is bad — just that they affect about 350 million people.
The same is true of the newly-revised privacy settings, a change that is being met with a great deal of criticism. Some are suggesting that Facebookâs real agenda is to make content much more public than it was before, couching it within a guise of a privacy overhaul. It’s worth a visit to the privacy settings page to ensure that your information is shared only with those you wish to. If you are in the “plan to make changes” or “not given it much thought” camps, here’s the privacy settings page.” –Paul Chaney