About 6 months ago, I left Facebook using a funny website called suicidemachine.org. 

My reasons were simple. Facebook sent me several notifications to review my privacy settings and when I did, not only was I confused, but as a former InfoSec professional (CISSP) every paranoia alarm bell went off in my head. I could tell Mark Zuckerberg and Co. was playing with both the fine print and fire. So I left Facebook, partially cause I can't stand having people connected to me I have never met and worst, people connected to me whom I knew, but were never my friend to begin with.  Call me a realist... But there was more to it than that.

As I have often had to explain since, I dropped off Facebook not for the obvious privacy issue of people seeing my public "feed" and fake friends, but for the not so obvious reason that if you look closely at Facebook's policies, you will note, they own every single thing you do on their website and that is just plain wrong with a capital W. 

But the real smelly bits are in the subtext of how Facebook approaches end user privacy issues. Many companies "own" content generated on their websites, but few of them have been so crafty about how they manipulate user trust and extended that fragile trust in ways users don't understand and didn't intend. An excellent example of this is the way in which Facebook privacy settings and controls were implemented. Facebook on several occasions changed or added a new "feature", then set those new features to "public" by default (think google buzz) and then put the responsibility on me, the user to go and turn it off, not respecting my already stated globally privacy settings. It may sound like a small issue, but what if a new "feature" is a widget that shares all your friends with the world? If it isn't bad enough that Facebook ignored my stated privacy requests when adding new features, they make finding and reapplying security settings so convoluted that it is nearly impossible to navigate for anyone but the most savvy users.

 

Zuckerberg says he's working to fix all these issues, but it's going to take more than a shinny new security settings page to get me to trust Facebook again. I am not saying it's impossible to win me back, as a matter of fact it couldn't be easier, simply implement Creative Commons for every single user page on Facebook and let users choose what can and can't be done with the content they generate. Creative Commons is a standardized way to give users copyright control and it would turn me into a Facebook endorsor almost overnight.

Many people don't know about Creative Commons, but it is a key part of the Internet and the future of user generated content. It's most prominent on the popular photo sharing website called Flickr. On Flickr, each time you upload a photo, as the photos owner, you can select what you will and won't allow others (including Flickr) to do with your images. It's as easy as setting a global privacy setting and forgetting about it. For example all my Flickr photos have the following license automatically attached to them when I upload them.

Think about it:

1) Free users get easy, unified and global privacy settings (no more shenanigans)

2) Offer a full Creative Commons version of my profile in addition to 1) and charge me for it ($12 year)

3) I would be one of the users in 2)

It's an easy win. So, if it's so clear and easy to implement Creative Commons why hasn't Facebook done it?

They could be evil

They could be greedy

They could be dump

or the more likely truth is

They just don't care about me...

And that is why I committed Facebook suicide.

For the next year I think the iPad is king until some technological advance allows for either significantly more processing power/watt or a higher density energy storage is developed that allows 10 hr performance despite a more powerful and less efficient processor. The screen is a non issue. at 720p (full HD) and with full multitouch capability it's as unassailable as the ramparts of Edinburgh castle.  The real secret of the iPad is it's weight, at around 1.6lbs (0.73 kg), the majority of the weight is in it's batteries hidden behind the screen. It is my opinion that users will simply not accept a hand held computer that weights over 1.6lbs for the foreseeable future. Don't belive me? Take an iPad to bed with you and try reading an ebook. You quickly realize, learning to hold an iPad is part of the learning curve and then the second thing you will notice is, if it were any heavier, you would not use it at all. Again, perfect market position. Apple discovered the upper bound of acceptable weight for the case, then maxed out the one component that is pretty much a static variable for everyone, battery technology. leaving the competition no where to attack except on processing power and efficiency, which Apple has begun to master as well (see Apples new A4 chip). It makes my head spin how good Apple is at seeing the way forward thru the technological limitations of hardware and the power of third party software.

I am make it no secret I am impressed with Steve Jobs and Co. but I think they could use a little competition. I mean seriously, there is not a single company that can catch Apple's momentum right now. Not google and certainly not MS or Nokia. It's just not fun being the best by this much of a spread. Or is it Steve?