The last few weeks have seen thousands of blog posts tearing Facebook to pieces over their new auto personalization features. Many also took that one step further and pointed to the fact that it is about time to stop using Facebook. That Facebook can’t be trusted anymore. Jason Calacanis even called Mark Zuckerberg the worst thing in our industry over the new features and how Facebook is treating their partners.

I want to take a different approach here. Don’t get me wrong – It might be that the way Facebook is conducting business and treat partners is horrible. I just don’t have enough info to decide for sure. But as for the way they evolve their platform and the way they approach privacy issues – I actually admire them.

You can say a lot of things about Mark Zuckerberg, but the guy has the balls of a bull. It’s not just saying no to the $900 million deal from Yahoo. It’s about doing what he thinks is right without listening to anyone around. This is a very tough thing to do as you are judged just based on results. If you were right – you come out as a genius. But if you are wrong you come out as the arrogant prick who thought he knew better than anyone. Until now – he was almost always right.

In the past few years, Facebook has made some very big changes, each one was accepted with rage and complaints from everyone including the users. But for the most part, we learned that the changes were actually good and they made Facebook just more powerful.
Think about it, even when the news feed introduced there were groups of users calling to strike, blogs who cried foul and everyone wanted the old Facebook back. Today, the news feed is one of the most common elements in every web service and it is one of the things that made Facebook what it is.

But let’s get back to the current change. We all talk about the fact that privacy is important. We all want to show that we care about the privacy of users. But the matter of fact is that Privacy sucks. Privacy issues are one of the things that keep innovation out and the web back.
In reality, why should you care if some brand knows what music you like? Why should you care if a brand knows what product you like to buy? If this information can help companies give  you better experience, more discounts - why should you care??
Go back to 1997. Most people who were not very young or techies were saying that they would never ever put a credit card on the web. They were afraid of their data and privacy. How would the web look like if Amazon were to agree with this approach and make you phone call to complete your order?
Privacy is not really about privacy. It’s about the illusion of privacy. It’s about the feeling of control. Most people don’t really care about other people knowing these details about them. It just that they are used to have these details private and like many things in life, they don’t trust change. They want to feel that they are in control (Which of course is an illusion – Google knows everything possible about us, but as they don’t rub this in our eyes, no one really cares).

What Facebook is doing will make the web 10 times better in the future. The holy grail of user experience is connecting all the disparate data points together, to give you a truly personalized experience. This is exactly what Facebook enabling right now.
Right now we are afraid and angry, but in a few months we will all get used to the new experience and ask ourselves how did we ever do things differently.

Now just to be clear – whether it is good that Facebook get to be in the center of it all or is it good to have one company with such power – this is a completely different question. But once again, Facebook have the courage to say we know better and go with what they believe, no matter what. And for that they should get some of our admiration.

• Previous Entry: The New Trends in Advertising
• Next Entry: Goodbye NuConomy. A New Chapter In Life Begins Now