Features

• Can Facebook privacy be simple?

  Facebook, according to its CEO, is built around the simple idea that people want to share things with "their friends and the people around them."  

• Is there a replacement for Facebook?

  Facebook claims to have more than 400 million active users. In fact, according to Web analytics firm Alexa, only Google is a more popular site. So, with all that going for it, why are so many users unhappy, with one poll showing that more than half of Facebook users are thinking about leaving?

• Facebook's privacy fixes can't cure stupid

  Facebook deserves plenty of blame for messing too much with its privacy settings, but no amount of fixing will stop people from embarrassing themselves on the Internet.

• Is Facebook truly sorry for its privacy sins?

  Want an expert lesson in how to respond without actually responding and how to apologize without saying you're sorry? Then you need to read Facebook CEO Mark Zukerberg's quasi-mea culpa in today's Washington Post. Do it now; I'll wait.

• Good-bye to privacy?

  New Yorker Barry Hoggard draws a line in the sand when it comes to online privacy. In May he said farewell to 1251 Facebook friends by deleting his account of four years to protest what he calls the social network's eroding privacy policies.

• 60 percent would quit Facebook? Yeah, right

  Facebook's privacy problems reportedly have the social network rethinking its approach, and a new poll suggests that the threat of user decline is real, but don't expect a mass exodus any time soon.

• Facebook's Battering: Good for Competition?

  As complaints about Facebook continue to pile up to epic proportions, its competitors are receiving glittering press, financial support, and spikes in site traffic. Is this a signal that the Great Facebook Exodus has begun, and can the trend maintain momentum?

• Open letter to Facebook on privacy

  Facebook appears to be working diligently at establishing itself as the site that people love to hate. Don't get me wrong, passionate views are a mark of success--just look at Microsoft, Apple, and Google. Still, the trick is to foster that passion (and generate revenue) without inviting undue regulatory scrutiny or legal backlash.

• Google's privacy afterthought

  A few days ago, 10 privacy commissioners from Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Israel, Ireland, The Netherlands and New Zealand wrote an open letter to Google's CEO Eric Schmidt asking for more proactive privacy protections in new applications. The commissioners are not objecting to Google's overall privacy policies, but to the way Google launches new services.

• Facebook CEO challenges the social norm of privacy

  Lost in the flurry of products announcements at last week's Consumer Electronics Show was Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's suggestion on Friday that some aspects of privacy are a thing of the past. The Facebook founder's comments were part of an interview with TechCrunch's Michael Arrington during last week's Crunchie awards presentation.

• Use the Internet, lose your privacy

  Bruce Schneier, author and computer security expert, wrote a good reality-check essay on the subject of online privacy, or the lack thereof.