Instant Personalization = Instant Lack of Privacy

So when Facebook rolls out a change to their system, about 400 million people are affected. And most of them will notice. That is of course, unless the change is buried in the settings that you rarely go to.

I am of course referring to the new "Instant Personalization" feature that Facebook rolled out this week. This feature is supposed to extend the Facebook experience to the larger (though only participating at this time) web. That's actually a pretty good idea, but Facebook might want to watch the world's response to privacy issues as they innovate.

Remember that flap when Google Buzz said, "Hey, everyone wants to share all their information" and opted everyone into Google Buzz? It resulted in a quick change and more than one investigation. Welcome to 2010 Facebook. One of the first items I came across on the web with a search on "Instant Personalization" was this blog, mostly discussion how to remove it. Which I quickly did, by the way.

There are a lot of smart developers at Facebook. Are you really telling me that you couldn't have popped a window up for every user and said, "Hey we've got this great new feature with these partners, but you'll have to send them your information to make it work. Are you up for that?"

Instead, they stuck the information under Account, Privacy Settings, Applications and Websites. I've quoted part of that page below:

"Instant Personalization helps you connect more easily with your friends on select partner sites.

You'll find a personal and social experience the moment you arrive on our select partner sites -- Docs.com, Pandora, and Yelp. We're working closely with these partners so you can quickly connect with your friends and see relevant content on their sites. These sites personalize your experience using your public Facebook information."

The biggest issue here is that Facebook and other social media systems seem to be treating the information you've put into their system as theirs, not yours. It's one thing to put information out there, it's another to have someone put it out there for you and send it to other sites. I know we can't put the genie back in the bottle, but for these social networks to thrive in the long term, they are going to need to put their customers first, socialization second.