Facebook Graph Search and Lessons from Timeline

Facebook has announced its new Graph Search feature which allows logged in users to search for information across their friend profiles. Facebook even made it a point to set up a page about privacy in the graph search to try to head off concerns from users.

In this case, Facebook may over-estimate its users. Do you remember when Facebook rolled out its timeline to everyone? Do you remember all the cries of privacy violations in the form of exposed private messages and old relationship details? I do. I recall that it all boiled down to user’s misunderstanding the feature and forgetting that they had publicly written and posted some things that might not look so good to them now.

I remember these headlines:

Let’s see if the Facebook user base on the whole can remember a lesson not even four months old — lock down the stuff you don’t want people to see in a search.

Complained about your co-worker? Remove it. Pictures of your former significant other? Hide them. Bragging about that thing you didn’t win? Purge it. Denying the holocaust? Go to hell.

If you aren’t sure how to do that, Google can probably point you to a pile of tutorials.

Update, Jnuary 23, 2013

One Comment

Reply

Thank you!

Leave a Comment or Response

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>