Google+ and Facebook: Two Very Different Approaches for Protecting our Privacy
Google+, unveiled by Google on Tuesday
The biggest problem with social networking in general, but especially Facebook, is that people who you try to keep out of your online world often end up getting into it anyway.
Whether that world is a picture of you out at a bar on the same Tuesday night you told your boss your presence was a health-risk to the entire office, or something as simple as your address, there are a lot of things we put on the internet we only want certain people to see.
Social networking sites bring people– and information– together. They do it well. Too well, perhaps. Privacy has become very hard to find and even harder to hang onto in the online world.
There are many reasons for this problem: our posting habits, hard to understand and poorly configured privacy settings and our “friend” pool’s growth way past our real friends.
I say especially Facebook because the site is currently the largest and most complex of the networks that we disclose information into. To let you control this information, Facebook has engineered the ever-changing privacy protection tab that currently contains an average of about 20 separate categories (e.g. birthday, posts by me, photos, places you check into, phone number) with six settings each, not including customizable options.
As Facebook has expanded the ways it encourages us to share our information, this system for giving us control hasn’t worked perfectly, and missteps have caused a lot of user frustration with the network. The company’s response to this frustration has been, almost without exception, to add more privacy controls.
We throw more of our private information into this mess of options than we throw into all other websites combined.
Enter Google Plus. Google, the search and ad giant but social networking chump, announced its most involved attempt at an online community yesterday, Google Plus.
Several new ways to communicate, such as Huddles and Hangouts give Plus a novel edge over Facebook, but circles is the feature that stands out (see plus.google.com). Circles is a very visual and cleverly designed way to break your friends into groups. Basically, the idea is that one circle sees the photo of you dancing on top of the bar, and the other circle gets your announcement that you’ll be turning in early tonight.
This feature exists on Facebook, but it’s not nearly as cleverly designed or as important to how the network functions. And while it’s likely that Facebook will jump for features like Huddle and Hangouts and present similar versions, giving a feature like circles a central position at Facebook would be a major shift in the way the company handles your information.
Circles lets users present different information to separate groups.
Facebook’s privacy settings limit the access that some friends have to your profile. The result has been highly customizable and complex privacy settings that can let you select and modify what individual people or networks of people can see.
But Plus and its circles simplify this by letting you share different information exclusively with each group. Circles creates a news feed for each of your categories, allowing you to share with each group separately. At Facebook, there is one central feed that all your information goes into, and you use friend lists to decide who can see it.
Facebook's list feature allows you control over different people viewing the same information.
It may be that neither system is truly better than the other at keeping our information where we want it. But until now, Facebook has seemed like the only real option, and this lack of choice has really annoyed people.
For now, Facebook remains our only option. Plus will have to attract a significant following before it will become a true alternative. It’s Google more complete than the company’s other forays into the social networking world, which is good because Wave, Buzz and the others flopped.
Facebook has annoyed a lot of users by mishandling their privacy, and Plus may be able to ride this sentiment to widespread use. I for one, hope it does. Facebook sorely needs some competition.
Related articles
- The Power of Google+: Privacy “Circles” the Entire Experience (staynalive.com)
- Google+ Social Networking Site: First Impression (shoutmeloud.com)
- Google+ steers clear of privacy missteps (news.cnet.com)
- Google+ Arrives in Competition with Facebook (socialtimes.com)
