I'd say this is too little, too late, but not in the obvious way.
People are not leaving Facebook en masse right now, nor will they likely any time soon. But the Facebook vs. privacy meme has broken into the mainstream—I mean, it's literally on the cover of Time. Whether they realize it or not, a lot of people are reacting to this. They won't do anything as drastic as quitting Facebook, but they'll become more self-conscious. They'll start to post a little less and text a little more.
There won't be a Facebook exodus. Just a gradual weaning-off by users who don't even know they care about privacy, but are simply reacting viscerally to a vague mistrust of the company. Facebook won't implode, it'll just become less relevant. Like Yahoo, it'll be around for some time to come, but just as most of us haven't expected competitive search results from Yahoo for years, most of us will never really expect Facebook to safeguard any information we give it.
People are not leaving Facebook en masse right now, nor will they likely any time soon. But the Facebook vs. privacy meme has broken into the mainstream—I mean, it's literally on the cover of Time. Whether they realize it or not, a lot of people are reacting to this. They won't do anything as drastic as quitting Facebook, but they'll become more self-conscious. They'll start to post a little less and text a little more.
There won't be a Facebook exodus. Just a gradual weaning-off by users who don't even know they care about privacy, but are simply reacting viscerally to a vague mistrust of the company. Facebook won't implode, it'll just become less relevant. Like Yahoo, it'll be around for some time to come, but just as most of us haven't expected competitive search results from Yahoo for years, most of us will never really expect Facebook to safeguard any information we give it.