Facebook acts just like any other monopoly

Facebook started with a brilliant idea, just like any other monopoly.

Although Facebook didn't invent social networking, it did a terrific job to execute the idea, grow insanely fast and beat its competitors, just like any other monopoly.

Since Facebook got to a great position, it started doing something, which usually early-age start-ups try hard to avoid - pissing off users, just like any other monopoly. More specifically, as you already knew, it keeps ignoring users' privacy.

One important thing that backs it up is its business, social networking. Social networking is one of those businesses that once you use it, it is way too complicated and expensive to switch to other alternatives. If you already have hundreds of friends on Facebook, how could you easily shutdown your account and create another network somewhere else (which is nowhere for now, unfortunately)? Another good example is Microsoft's territory in enterprise software. Most companies don't even want to get rid of IE6 due to the cost, let along Windows and Office.

The whole philosophy behind Facebook's privacy policy changes is two folds, in my opinion.

First, Facebook is betting that 90% of its users don't realize that they should check the policy, or they don't care. So it makes the default setting to share as much as possible. 90% of the rest of users won't check the policy in detail if it is too complicated to understand. So it makes its policy implicit and complicated and makes policy setting interface extremely difficult.

Second, with its dominant position, Facebook can experiment kicking off bad policies without worrying much of losing users. Think about it, even if the policy doesn't work out eventually, what's the worst thing that could happen? Facebook can just roll back the changes and apologize. It will still have its, I don't know exactly, hundreds of millions of users, even if tens of thousands of them are pissed off so badly and quit. Again, this is just like any other monopoly.

Don't get me wrong. I don't completely hate Facebook. With no doubt, Facebook changed the way we share. On the day any of us created Facebook accounts, we admitted that we want to more or less share something. I also really like a few ideas from Facebook, such as Facebook Development APIs and Facebook Connect. I especially believe Open Graph is a great idea, if it is done right. While Google is aggregating information from the web, Facebook is aggregating information from our lives and our minds. This is HUGE. With this information, Facebook has big potential to really build better web to help people. For instance, I'm a big fan of Aardvark, which I think is a perfect example with which Facebook could make huge difference based on its user base and information. I'm actually surprised when Aardvark was bought by Google but Facebook, maybe Facebook has already started building its own.

It's not very fair to blame Facebook for everything. Its whole business model is based on the number of users and the amount of information users are willing to share, or are forced to share, or share without even being aware of it. Facebook wants to grow and it does what it is meant to do. It depends on the user to accept it or not. When there are no other options, Facebook wins. What Facebook really needs is competitors, good competitors, just like any other monopoly.