Facebook might have averted a potential mass revolt by pulling, for now, terms service which in effect says the social networking site owns or co-owns whatever content is loaded into the site.
Tuesday's speedy about face, to the previous terms of service might have Facebook some breathing space to "resolve the issues that people have raised," as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in his blog, afer 70,000 facebook users joined forces to voice their anger.
Essentially, the recalled terms of service says that "you grant Facebook and irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute…" when you join and upload data to Facebook.
The recalled terms also stated that Facebook can "use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising".
In a much earlier blog titled Fifteen year of the Web, and Facebook 15 years from now, Shane Schick noted that social networking has changed the World Wide Web by shifting its emphasis from information to relationships.
Shane also observed that people tend to "congregate as user" not in open, public services, but in company-owned sites. "If CERN had invented Facebook, its focus would probably not have been on advertising opportunities but the chance to enlarge the online conversation," he said.
Recent developments would suggest that Facebook, in a span of five years, has quickly outgrown its cuddly "relationship" with its users.
Although it beat a hasty retreat from its earlier position, Facebook's actions would serve to remind us that most social sites are not really our friends.
Far from being a bunch of fun loving friends offering cool widgets to help us while the time away and connect with other friends looking to while their time away, these are business entities. Businesses are there to make money.
This should remind us to be more conscious of the fact that we could be signing away our rights to our own content each time we click that agree button.
If the price of admission into social networking sites is giving up your rights to your personal data or content, perhaps it's time to start looking for that open, public service space that would seek to enlarge online conversation rather than one that is just out for advertising opportunity.