Sorry Zuckerberg/Facebook…The Age of Privacy Ended Long Ago

Posted by Howard
on January 10th, 2010

I believe strongly in ‘User Controlled Privacy’.

We have been abused by the old guard. Our names and financial info have been sold in disgusting ways. BUT, we have been lazy with our data. I don’t expect much to change or Facebook to behave any better than the last generation of data whores.

I can be fake on Facebook and real on Twitter. I guess there is a viceversa but few are doing it that way.

I loved going to The Crunchies last Friday. It was cool seeing Stocktwits on any best of web list, especially one from the west coast as we are a financial community.

It was also cool to see Zuckerberg of $FBOOK speak with Arrington, in a non cool did it once kind of way.

Today, I see the headline from their chat from Read Write Web . Zuckerberg says the age of privacy is over.

Silicon Valley is always a bit smug in their over importance.

The age of privacy did not end in 2004 with Facebook and the social web.

Equifax, Transunion, Capital One, American Express and their cousins raped our privacy and Facebook is a long overdue new competitor in a new age of what I would call ‘User Controlled Privacy’. If we are lazy, Facebook could be really big and powerful and we will be very aggravated with them.

Our spending habits are what is worth the most money. Our intentions are what is worth the money. It is why Mint.com could so quickly sell for $170 million and may have been really cheap. I long to see some real competition to Equifax, Capital One et al and Facebook and Twitter could take the lead in this. I would love to see a new system, but I don’t live in fantasyland and Equifax will not go quietly.

For now, Facebook can make a killing off gossip and dating leads. There are a few lost jobs from drunk tweets. But so far, they have 300 engineers, Russia owns them and I am worried that my phone bill could be $1 trillion from my daughter playing Farmville.

When Facebook has to deal with the government, the lobbyists and the lawyers at Equifax and Transunion, I may start to listen to Mark Zuckerberg.

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