I’ve been watching Facebook’s hamfisted attempts to monetise their user base by selling your personal data to advertisers, with increasing amazement. It’s one thing (and a very Web 2.0 thing at that), to struggle with your business model, but another thing entirely to do it by:
- Spinning that your customers don’t care about privacy.
- Obfuscating their controls and settings
- Taking your data out of your control and selling it, anyway
The EFF have some good coverage.
I don’t know anyone who actually, actively likes using Facebook, so you’d think that the ground was ripe for a competitor, but sadly I get the feeling that most of the current competitors, would like to do precisly what Facebook is doing, if only they had the balls and the market power.
But there is some buzz building around some new start ups with very different models.One is Diaspora – a new start-up that aims to create a distributed, person-centric alternative to Facebook that puts – and keeps you in control of your personal data. I have invested through Kickstarter and if you care about this stuff, I invite you to join me.
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