The Pontiflex Blog

The Annals of Privacy: Revenge of the Nerds

May 14, 2010 at 2:36 pm Geoff Grauer Leave a comment

Like everyone else, I’ve been following Facebook’s privacy debacle – but I’ve also been wondering – what’s the actual fall out going to be? We know the company called an “all hands” meeting to discuss the situation internally. We know that press has abounded: In addition to the general criticisms of Facebook’s privacy policies (and general blasé attitudes toward consumer information) from industry insiders, there have been numerous consumer facing articles about the difficulties of deleting Facebook profiles, step by step instructions on limiting access (or as we call it “opting out” from what you’ve been unwittingly and automatically “opted into.”).

But what will the real consequences look like? The New York Times gave us a sneak preview in its feature on Diaspora*, an open source social network that allows people to “set up their own personal servers, or seeds, create their own hubs and fully control the information they share.” Four NYU students developed the idea as a direct response to the invasive privacy policies of existing social networks. So far, they’ve gotten over 2,000 Twitter followers and raised nearly $25,000 from 739 backers through KickStarter, the online site that helps people get funding for creative projects and ideas.

Remember the movie “Revenge of the Nerds”? Of course you do, but I’ll remind you anyway. To stop harassment from fraternity jocks, a band of nerds beats them at their own (Greek) games. The nerds use their intelligence to beat them at the athletic activities, they make a computer programmed musical production to out-flash the frats, and they get the dean’s support to kick the Alpha Betas out of their house.  In short, they did exactly what the NYU students are doing to the big social networks: using their smarts to see opportunities, developing sophisticated software and garnering public support.

Whether Diaspora* will be successful is yet to be seen, but here’s what’s clear: this is going to be just one of many potential threats that Facebook will have to contend with if it doesn’t take privacy seriously.  If they don’t, doors will open to the millions of the nerdy college students who, with some intelligent code and a few good ideas, will soon be the cool kids.

Entry filed under: CIO Update, Privacy, Social Marketing. Tags: .