Has Facebook Gone Too Far?

[Series] With the introduction of frictionless sharing, it might be time to rethink what you "like" about the social media goliath.

This is the second part of a series on social media by digital strategist, author, and speaker Rahaf Harfoush. Check out Part 1: The Evolution of the Web Persona.

Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, Tumblr, Pinterest, FourSquare, Google+, and Last.fm are just some of the outlets we currently have available to us for sharing everything from what we're thinking to what we're eating, and everything in between. We know we are posting this information, and we know this information is being stored and tracked. Stories of people getting fired for inappropriate tweets or status updates have already become urban legends, tales of caution told to scare social network users into enhancing their privacy controls.

Facebook's new changes, announced at the 2011 f8 developer conference, signal a major shift in the online privacy landscape, alongside a new type of tracking that dramatically increases the amount of information collected by the data-mining Goliath. These changes push users to voluntarily produce, capture, and share more data online, as well as set up processes to make it easier for Facebook to collect a wide range of behaviours, beyond basic information, via status updates, comments, likes, and affiliations with brand pages.

Let's take a closer look at these changes and their implications:

1. Timeline: Facebook Wants Users to Retroactively Populate it With Data

The new timeline feature is being touted as a living digital scrapbook. Users can begin with birth and fill the chronological stream with photos and videos from their life's milestones. In addition, Facebook helpfully tracks the minutiae including all status updates, downloaded apps, and all "likes." Essentially, the goal is to use Facebook as an anchor for users' memories, media, and content.

2. Verbs vs. Nouns: Facebook Wants to Track Actions, Not Just "Likes"

Until recently, Facebook users only activity with various posting – the brands they use, the songs they listen to, etc. – was to click that little blue "like" button. However, "liking" is one-dimensional and limited because it contains an implicit endorsement: that users like a product. Soon "liking" will be replaced with "Facebook Gestures," which means that instead of liking [object x] users will be able to [verb] [object x]. Soon Facebook users will be able to specify that they're listening to a particular song, or watching a certain television show; those actions will be captured by the platform and added to your Facebook profile. This creates a new dimension of data available to Facebook.

3. Automated Collection: Facebook Doesn't Want Users to Actively Think About What They're Sharing

One of the more controversial changes for Facebook is that users will only be asked to authorize an app once. After that, the app will not repeatedly ask for permission to share information since opting in. Why does this matter? Well, Facebook announced a slew of partnerships with companies such as Hulu & Spotify which enable users, if they've opted in, to watch shows and listen to music without ever leaving the Facebook walled garden. In addition, if users have opted in to this service the app will broadcast what they're watching/listening to and their friends can click a link to watch that content at the same time, enabling both people to collectively experience content.