Well Mark Zuckerberg has finally proffered a solution to one of the biggest problems Facebook had been facing is the general opinion that it vacuums all sorts of personal information about its users. Zuckerberg also knows that the network’s revenue stream is almost entirely contingent on targeted ads, which in turn depends on — sigh, assimilating personal information about users.
Users are capricious though. People are at ease with giving up personal information to friends on the network but not okay with Facebook looking over their shoulders the whole time. So Zuckerberg has proposed the beginnings of a kinder, gentler social network. Facebook already had the privacy dinosaur popping up on every other time to remind users that they have the alternative of setting their posts to “public” or just letting our friends see them.
But on Wednesday at Facebook’s F8 Conference, the company went above and beyond with this new approach to privacy by introducing the “anonymous login“. It is not truly anonymous though, it just complements the “login with Facebook” button seen at signup on all third-party apps and services. The app or service won’t receive any personal information about you but Facebook still verifies it’s you, and still gets your personal information.
This move does three brilliant things: it shows that your privacy matters to Facebook; it removes one of the most infuriating signs of the privacy problem- a third-party app posting to for you; and it redirects personal information back to Facebook. No other app will have access to them. The more prevalent “anonymous login” is the more Facebook controls use of information.
The new login will mean many changes on the developer side, because even though the new login is designed to help developers progress their apps by providing a better user experience – it is good business when users do not feel their privacy is threatened when using your app, these developers will have to convince Facebook that the authorizations their apps are requesting are actually essential. The network also realizes that applying these changes will be an extensive process, so app developers have a year to make their current apps amenable with the new login criteria. for any new apps However, the new login-review step applies immediately.
At the same F8 keynote, Facebook announced its new Mobile Advertising platform, called the Facebook Audience Network. It will let developers run ads on their apps, sold by Facebook, making use of Facebook’s data for better targeting.
Photocredit: BusinessWeek, iDownloadblog
