Facebook Controversy: Trust Problem, or Much Ado About Nothing?
This week on the 3 Tech Guys, Brent Leary, Gene Marks and Ramon Ray celebrated by saying Happy 7th Birthday to the iPhone and looked at the future of mobile technology. The celebration ended and things really heated up when they shared their thoughts and opinions on the recent Facebook controversy that has people wondering how their data is being used and what level of transparency Facebook should be offering its customer base. You can catch all the action in the video below.
Happy 7th Birthday iPhone
On June 29, 2007 people stood in line to get their hands on the newest piece of technology from Apple Computers –the iPhone. Seven years later, we’ve seen a drastic evolution in the technology. So what’s next and where will the technology be seven years from now?
The iPhone definitely broke the mold but we are just getting started. We aren’t just going to see changes in the software, but hardware as well. The future is going to bring us a device that we fold into a small phone or back into a tablet or even laptop.
Brent shared that if we are going to really look at the evolution of technology, then we need to go back to June 28, 1914 - the assassination of Prince Ferdinand of Austria, an event that kicked off World War I. This was the first mechanized war – the first where wireless communications came to the forefront. And while it’s taken us a hundred years to get to where we are today, we are just at the beginning. Samsung is Apple’s key rival and they are going to push each other and we are going to see great things coming.
Looking into the future, the 3TechGuys feel that years from now things will be much smaller and Google Glass and interactive technology will be more prevalent in the mobile devices we use.
The lesson for small business: No matter what size the business, you need to keep your eyes on mobile technology. Over the next few years enterprise-wide applications will be maturing, allowing us to handle more jobs and tasks from our mobile devices, which will leave less people behind desks and more people performing their jobs on the go.
The Facebook experiment and the controversy behind it
Gene explained that Facebook is getting some negative PR over a recent psychological study it performed on a small subset of its user base (about 600,000 users). The study, which interrupted the news feed of the users in order to gauge their reactions to positive and negative items, collected data in order to see the effects of different types of information on the user.
So what’s the controversy? THEY DID THIS WITHOUT THE USERS KNOWLEDGE!
While many of us signed our lives away to use this service, and like it, we signed away for normal use of the system and that’s not what this is. Facebook is gaming the system to see how we respond. They are taking actions to see how they can manipulate your information and then analyzing it in the back room. This isn’t “normal” use and Facebook didn’t seem to care that people were upset by this and took the attitude of “we do what we want to do and you will have to live with it.”
Ramon’s feeling is that Facebook users have signed agreements to give our data to Facebook. Facebook is not a public utility. This is not the bathroom where there is expected common courtesy. Reality is we should expect this to happen – we don’t pay for the service, they can use the data and it’s not a big deal and this is just much ado about nothing!
Gene cautions that this is a lesson for the business community. Yes it’s a free service, but bottom line is they broke their promise to their customers and that’s important.
The lesson to small business: If you are collecting data from your community, be transparent and tell them that you are doing it and what the data will be used for.
Recommended Reads
Gene: Value Prop by Jose Palomino - This book provides great tips on how to create powerful value propositions for the technology you are looking to sell.
Ramon: The Startup Playbook by David S. Kidder. This book provides great tips on the things you need to know about starting a business and shares successes from many successful start-up companies.