Facebook, which just recently reached 500 million members, has become a daily ritual for many of us. We give the site information about ourselves, about our likes and dislikes, and about the people we choose as friends. Over time, all of that data collects on Facebook’s servers. But Facebook, in many people’s view, has played fast and loose with our data, marking much of it as “public” and giving its app-developer and advertising partners access to some of it.
Facebook users surveyed for the 2010 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) gave the site a score of just 64 on a user-satisfaction scale of 0 to 100; many of the respondents cited privacy and advertising as key concerns. Yet many people in the online-advertising business believe that such privacy concerns are overplayed, and are largely the creation of overzealous privacy groups and their friends in the media.
Who is right? Please take our three-question survey and tell us your opinions on social networking privacy. We’ll share the results of the poll in a future story.