Brands and Contexts in Social Networks

First of the privacy nightmares with major social networks began with Facebook’s ambitious project Facebook Beacon Facebook’s grand idea was to link up leading ecommerce websites such as eBay and amazon, with the personal space of user profiles in Facebook. So eBay can distribute listings through the newsfeed of a user who has shown interest in an item. As you may remember this caused a major uproar: http://www.pcworld.com/article/140182/facebooks_beacon_more_intrusive_th... and forced Facebook to completely scrap the idea. At the time Facebook were apologetic and promised they would learn from their mistakes.

Then Google stepped into the ring with Buzz, their grand idea being that all Gmail users will want to use Buzz. And so they were all automatically added to Buzz, while everyone on their contact list was automatically added as friends in Buzz. The major flaw in this was that anyone then can in effect look into your contact list Following another uproar Google were forced to carry out a privacy reset.

And now Facebook is under attack yet again for introducing changes which make the privacy settings too complicated, so much so the users are longer in control of their data. Low and behold Facebook have “listened” again and taken steps to simplify these settings following threats of a mass unsubscribe on 31st May. 28, 10.

What can we learn from these very public incidents in which these large social networks have failed to anticipate the consequences of their actions?

Social network profiles are extensions of our identity; when we create a profile, upload pictures, join groups we are building and reinforcing the perception of our identity to others.

We all have different sides to our identity and the front we put on varies on the context of our environment. The context of Facebook is a very personal one, while the context of a network like LinkedIn is a very business related one.

The latest error by Facebook constitutes a context collapse.

In other words there’s no room for sharing data without consent in the personal context. While we may not object to our data being shared around on LinkedIn everyone will certainly object to persona data being shared.

What can brands learn from context collapse?

Establishing the right tone in the right context is crucial in nurturing relationships with your audience. In the context of Facebook this often means that you have to tailor your message to adapt a personal tone. At the extreme end this is why groups about verrucas will never kick off on Facebook, no one will want to admit to their friends they have a verruca.

To succeed it is crucial consider what kind of a message your statement makes about your audience and in what context.