Is it Time for an Alternative to Facebook?

Facebook is in a relationship with 400 million users, and it just changed its status to "complicated."

Wired.com’s Epicenter is asking a question that many people have been whispering recently: Has Facebook gone rogue? In the wake of Facebook’s new everything-is-public approach and its Open Graph API, it is difficult not to feel like Facebook is a different and less friendly social network than it used to be. Should we be looking for an alternative?

As Epicenter notes, Facebook used to be a happy place to share updates and photos with friends and family and perhaps play a few games. No matter how Facebook wants to position it, the changes it has implemented are all about the business – driving more revenue as opposed to serving its users better.

Of course, when you get down to brass tacks, a business is about revenue and profits, and if consumers are happy, that’s a bonus. For Facebook, the hard truth is that, despite having millions of users, it wasn’t making enough money to be a viable business. This explains why Facebook made the changes: more public data means more traffic, which, in theory, means more revenue and profits.

If this new approach pisses off some users and privacy advocates along the way, Facebook seems to be saying, “Tough. Where else are you going to go?” Being arrogant is easy when you’re an industry Goliath whose users number more than 400 million and whose competitors – MySpace, Friendster, Bebo, and Orkut – are irrelevant or in decline.

A viable alternative to Facebook doesn’t exist right now. As a result, we’re stuck with it. It’s where the action is happening, so companies have no choice but to be there, even if they have reservations.

Microsoft didn’t really change its stripes until Google came along to provide consumers with another option for email. Facebook will continue to act like a petulant child until another, nicer social network start-up emerges. The question is, when? And what will it be like?

This essay originally appeared here. For more about the author, Mark Evans, visit his website.