Three days ago The Consumerist started quite an uproar when they notified the world of Facebook changing their terms of service significantly without notifying anyone. Before the change the rights to all the good stuff you uploaded expired when you deleted it. After the change, Facebook owned you. Well at least your content… Forever.
“You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.”
Needless to say, this made Facebook users pretty unhappy. Complaints were logged across the internet in an unorganized grassroots campaign to stop Facebook’s stupidity.
This takes us to Monday the day after the news broke. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the time to dance around the topic in his blog. He tried using flawed logic to explain the changes, and gave his word that they wouldn’t do anything wrong with your data.
“In reality, we wouldn’t share your information in a way you wouldn’t want. The trust you place in us as a safe place to share information is the most important part of what makes Facebook work. Our goal is to build great products and to communicate clearly to help people share more information in this trusted environment.”
It didn’t take more than a day before Mark Zuckerberg announced on his blog that the terms of service were going to be changed back to what they were originally. He also welcomed input on a future change to their terms of service from the community.
The good thing about others making mistakes is it gives us a chance to learn from them without the public humiliation. Facebook forgot to appreciate its community. Your visitors are your customers. Treat them accordingly.
In all this mess Facebook did a really good thing. They quickly corrected the mistake. There is nothing worse than dragging out a problem and ruining your reputation before fixing your mistake.
What else can we learn from Facebook’s debacle?
 |
 |
 |
 |
I’m glad Facebook reconsidered their TOS and put them back to where they were. I’m getting tired of sites forgetting who made them successful.
Good thing that they changed it back, I could see them getting sued for such a thing.
Anthony, I believe their TOS has an arbitration clause(s). Which means you can’t sue, but that is a whole other can of worms.