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Facebook Privacy Policies Have Litte Impact on Users as the Strategy of the Lowest Common Denominator -- also found in Blogging, Publishing, Academia and the Law - Captures the Mainstream

By Andis Kaulins

Privacy concerns about Facebook have few teeth in the absence of laws which impose a stricter regimen on what customer data social networking sites are permitted to make public and what not. As written in a Business Week headline,Facebook Privacy Woes Make Little Impact on Site?s Popularity:

"While privacy is a consideration for users, many are wedded to Facebook?s features, such as messaging, social gaming and running feeds of friends? status updates. The average user creates 70 pieces of content monthly and is connected to 60 pages, groups and events, according to Facebook."

The strategy of Facebook seems to approximate the same basic philosophy as followed by the major surviving Hollywood film studios, in fact the main reason for their survival, which was a strategy geared to pleasing the lowest common denominator, the same market group that drives mainstream television. Indeed, this strategy is the one which is successful for nearly any "mainstream" direction, including blogging, publishing, academia (academic schools of thought and "peer group pressure", also via "peer review") and yes, even the law (mainstream precedents represent the lowest common denominator, not the highest). To capture a "crowd" you have to pander to that crowd and Facebook is doing this better than anyone else at the moment.

Full post as published by LawPundit on May 26, 2010 (boomark / email).