a spectator sees more than a player

What Facebook’s Stumble Can Teach Your Company

(Harvard Business Publishing) 10:57 AM Thursday February 19, 2009

When you share information on a social site: Who owns the content? Who controls it? 

This question at is the core of Facebook’s current turmoil around its terms of service. Last week they tried to keep more rights on content for themselves, but a few days later they backed off. Why should your company care? Well, I believe every firm will eventually have a social media strategy – and all executives will face some of the same issues Facebook navigates today.  ..more

One Response to “What Facebook’s Stumble Can Teach Your Company”

  1. Thees Peereboom writes:

    Who owns what on social networks? And why is it important? In the early days it was very much ‘because we can’ – the main reason why Plaxo made every move you made public, because they could. When importing your adressbook into Plaxo, it immediately sent out a message to everyone in it, without asking or even telling it did. Somehow many of these social networks are of the opinion that data once entered belong to them. As far as I’m concerned there can be no doubt about it, very much in line with the author of this piece – I own the data and I should be able, at any time, to change, update or delete it. If the application would like to announce my update, it should not be able to do so without my consent.

    The lesson here, once again, is ‘trust your users’, put them in charge where it concerns their data and help them to make the best of it. No more, no less.

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