The New Yorker's John Cassidy and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg on User Control

The May 15th issue of The New Yorker has a lengthy article by John Cassidy on Facebook that includes an extensive interview with Mark Zuckerberg, the site's founder. Much of what Zuckerberg has to say about information flows is relevant not only for social networking but also for any attention-related service. Zuckerberg as quoted by Cassidy:

[O]ne way to look at the goal of [Facebook] is to increase people's understanding of the world around them, to increase their information supply...The way you do that best is by having people share as much information as they are comfortable with. The way you make people comfortable is by giving them control over exactly who can see what...

The problem Facebook is solving is this one paradox...People want access to all the information around them, but they also want complete control over their own information. Those two things are at odds with each other. Technologically, we could put all the information out there for everyone, but people wouldn't want that because they want to control their information.

Cassidy writes:

Under Metcalfe's Law, Facebook is vastly less useful than MySpace. But Zuckerberg argues that on social-networking sites it isn't the size of the over-all network that matters but the way people organize themselves into subnetworks and exchange information within those subnetworks. "If your site is open, and you let everyone read everything, then the stuff they put up is going to be less personal," he said. "The stuff that people want to share with just their friends is the most personal stuff: photo albums that you only want your friends to see, contact information, that kind of thing...It's a much smaller number of people getting the information, but it's more valuable," Zuckerberg said. "The information is going to the right people. So giving people control over who sees what helps to increase over-all information flow."

I'm encouraged by Zuckerberg's emphasis on user control and his belief that when people feel confident that their information-sharing preferences will be respected, they're willing to share more information. I think there's a significant parallel with AttentionTrust's Principles regarding user control of attention data.

Cassidy also suggests that Facebook's emphasis on user control has enhanced its business model:

Eighteen months ago, the going rate for a banner ad on social-networking sites was pennies per thousand page viewings. Today, the rate on MySpace is about ten cents, and facebook, with its upscale demographic and unobjectionable content, can charge more--as much as four dollars per thousand page views...

Facebook...claims that the ads are particularly effective because it uses information in members' profiles to serve them with ads related to their interests.

Obviously, profile entries are explicit gestures and thus different from the implicit gestures represented by clickstreams and other forms of attention data. But the implication that Facebook's emphasis on user control has encouraged users to share data, which in turn has enabled the site to deliver more relevant and desirable ads seems highly relevant to any prospective service seeking to make use of attention data.

I'm also a little amused by Cassidy's perspective on why social networking sites have been so successful. He writes:

The eagerness to parade in public on the Internet still surprises many people. Duncan Watts, a sociologist at Columbia who has been studying social networks for a decade, says that the growth of sites like Facebook and MySpace reflects a dramatic shift in how young people view the Internet. "Now everyone is used to the idea that we are connected, and that's not so interesting," he told me. "If I had to guess why sites like Facebook are so popular, I would have to say it doesn't have anything to do with networking at all. It's voyeurism and exhibitionism. People like to express themselves, and they are curious about other people."

Sounds like he's been reading Goldhaber.

tags: attention attentiontrust facebook new yorker john cassidy mark zuckerberg