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What Up Wit Dat??!!

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I guess the question should really be: "Facebook: What's always up with it?" The past couple of months, Facebook has undergone change after change. If the change hasn't been policy (controversial), then it's been superficial face-lifts. We all know that whenever you sign up for Any kind of social community, that there are bound to be changes.

Here are the possible choices:

• You can either accept them and roll with the punches

• You can try to petition and make a difference (Yeah right. Not without a forum) OR

• You can go your own merry way.

Those are the choices I see. I usually tend to roll with the punches, as long as they are legal and ethical. It's no big deal with me. I'm at FB, Twitter, My Opera, Linkedin, Blogger, etc. We all get the point.

What does bug me though, is the amount of change that FB goes through. It just can't make up it's mind. The latest change that came a few days ago, was a change in it's look and design. Really all it was, was a re-arrangement of features. Some "alleged" functionality changes. Haven't seen them. And if they are there, they're not obvious or self-intuitive nor is there any little icon that reads "NEW!!".

Facebook has taken it's tool. It quickly became a huge social-media conglomerate. It practically if not literally ripped all of MySpace's crowd. (Please do not get me started on MySpace with it's antiquated early 1990's features.) Facebook started as an upstart and quickly grew to it's place in the history of "Social Media Hubs", celebrating it's 6th birthday this year, just a few weeks ago today (Superbowl day, 2010!!).

Still, the winds of trend are fickle. Facebook's CEO and CIO claim that the mass amount of change is due to it's need & desire to stay competitively on the edge of social media. My biggest laugh came when Facebook made changes to it's "Privacy Policy" after much scorn from the general public as well as from it's members. (Not so much it's members as much as outside influences (government entities)). The humorous part of this is Facebook's CIO issued a public statement a couple of weeks AFTER it's privacy policy change (third one by this point). The statement made, and I'll paraphrase and cite my sources AFTER the Superbowl later today, was: We are keeping step with the modern day social media platform. Most people out there don't care about their privacy. Anybody that hasn't experienced social media experiences outside of Facebook, don't understand that the trend is openly share what ever you post, without regard to privacy!

I contend and submit, that this is completely untrue. For example, some of the largest trending social-media hubs or platforms, offer the option to keep certain information private (Twitter, Mashable and a few others.) Many others Do Not offer this feature. But the key here is that they either offer it or they don't and they make that very clear.
I also submit that when an online media-hub states that they have privacy options, that they have a clear expectation that their privacy will be honored. Otherwise, why bother with giving the "privacy" option?

Enough of me and my comments on privacy. I agree with whatever you put online, one should know, that this information WILL be disseminated throughout the whole web. But that's because I almost never choose a "privacy" option. That plus I'm cynical of words such as "We promise", "Your privacy is important", "We guarantee your money back", LOL.

If you're not a Facebook member, and you likely are not, check out the recent, recent, most recent changes. They're pretty funny, as it happens almost on a weekly basis. "Trial & Error" is what I call it. Still the only reason I visit, is because my family has memberships there, and we occasionally meed up from all 4 corners of the world.

Jerry Z.