(really) entrepreneureal

This email was sitting in my inbox this morning:

Now, I’m not one of the rabid users who has a dedicated Facebook tab in their browser window, but I do check the site at least once, maybe twice a day (sometimes many more).  So why does Facebook think it’s at all OK to send me an email reminding me that I haven’t checked in for all of, what, 4 hours?!  And this to remind me that I have a poke waiting for me?

Please. Facebook, get a grip.

Mark Zuckerberg has done it: Facebook is a household name, and is slowly kicking ass and taking names in the social networking arena (or not so slowly, in fact).  Mommas, poppas, grannies and even babies are signing up, and you know it’s a good thing when people can get fired because of their Fb profile shenanigans.

So why does Facebook consistently flout every social networking rule in the book?  From publishing feeds without asking permission (or allowing for comprehensive user control), to selling Fb user habits to help with ad targeting, it seems like the team at Fb is slowly losing touch with reality.  Sure, Fb is a free service, but the social compact that we all enter into when joining Facebook, whether written down or not, can’t just be thrown out the window.

Take Fb’s latest transgression: changing the page layout to make feed/status updates more visible.  Surely a slimly disguised dig at Twitter (and a sadly belated recognition that Fb didn’t realize that status updates were one of its biggest assets), the fact that the company up and changed the entire layout of the platform without asking its users for permission, or provide opt in/opt out privileges, is a huge social networking no-no. If people hated Facebook for first changing its design a few months back even when they were allowed to opt out, did Fb really think the latest layout change would go over well?

Zuckerberg definitely created a new genre of social networking with Facebook, but if he keeps ignoring the unwritten rules of social networking 101, his baby could quickly find itself in trouble.