Facebook did it!
They managed to, again, reach the top of the headlines on many news-websites, especially the techie kind of websites.
[ad]What did they do? You most probably have already heard about it. Facebook made some small changes in their Terms Of Service, which have a huge impact on you, as the user.
Basically, the changes they made allow them to use ALL the content that you upload onto your profile, in ANY WAY they want (altering, deleting, selling, …), and this FOREVER. Even when you quit your Facebook account!
This means, if you are a copywriter, and wrote some articles which you uploaded to Facebook, they are theirs now. Same goes if you are a musician, or a 3D artist, or a photographer, or anything… Facebook has, and keeps, the right to use your work, to change it as they want, to sell it. This is an incredible breach into many rights of artists and users.
Do you want to read more about this new TOS of Facebook, and it’s implications? Then I suggest you read this exellent article by Stan Schroeder:
http://mashable.com/2009/02/16/facebook-tos-privacy/
UPDATE: around the time of writing this article, The New York Times published an article about this statement on the FaceBook homepage today:
“Over the past few days, we have received a lot of feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.”
It seems that FaceBook users and their content are safe again. For now…
The article in The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/technology/internet/19facebook.html?_r=2&partner=rss
Incoming search terms:
Related posts:
- Where To Put a ‘Facebook Like’ On Your Website What is Facebook’s ‘Like’ Button? [ad] By...
- Advertising on Facebook Image via CrunchBase Being an internet marketer,...
- What is Facebook Marketing? So what ways can you market with...
- 12 Facebook Marketing Tips & Tools Marketing today is increasingly relational in all...
- Is Your Facebook Fanpage Really Helping Your Business? More businesses are scrambling to get Facebook...
Nice writing style. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Chris Moran
Thank you Chris, check out the blog regularly!
This Facebook fiasco is a reminder to us all that it makes sound business sense to build our own business, not someone else’s.
Sure, getting a cluster of content and links out there is a good idea, but I think many Internet marketers are falling into a trap when they pour a lot of their time into building heaps of content on third-party websites.
If you build your own business, under your own domain, it’s not only under your control, over time it becomes a valuable asset which you can sell if you wish.
I concentrate mainly on building valuable resources which are so useful people link to them voluntarily. Works for me.
I can’t but agree Allan, and I think what you are saying here is a very valuable piece of advice!
)
Creating content on someone else’s website might bring in some nice links (if any), but you will eventually get those too if you have good content!
As has been said many a times before: content is king. And if you own the king, the you win any game of chess (I think, I’m not a real chess-champion
[...] search engines cannot guess if a url such as http://www.icantinternet.org/?p=177 and http://www.icantinternet.org/?p=155 are basically pointing to a totally different page, or if [...]
This is very bad about Facebook
It is indeed, luckily they changed it back in the meantime…