Facebook simplifies account deletion

But there is still no master “delete” button.

On Monday, Facebook modified its help pages to tell people that if they wanted to remove their accounts entirely, they can direct the company by e-mail to have it done. But on Tuesday, representatives of Facebook stopped short of saying the company would introduce a one-step delete account option.

I called this on Sunday. While Facebook has had a number of high-profile customer-service problems, they typically attempt to resolve them quickly.

Interestingly, while coverage of this issue has (correctly) focused on privacy,—customers want to control their data—there has been little focus on why Facebook has made this process difficult. It’s not because Facebook wants to spy on their users. Rather, I would argue that there is no delete button because customer data is the only thing that Facebook “owns.” Its entire business model is based on users voluntarily providing the site with their preferences and social networks. While Facebook’s director for user experience and design Katie Geminder claims that the company keeps user information so users can reactivate their accounts—

Ms. Geminder said that Facebook’s policies were a reflection of the fact that many people came back to Facebook after they stopped using the site for a time. “On any given day, the number of users reactivating their accounts is roughly half of the number of users deactivating their accounts,” she said.

—she doesn’t mention that they also need this information. It doesn’t make any sense (from a strictly business perspective) for the company to allow users to easily delete the valuable information they have provided the site.

One obvious solution to this problem—users want to own their data and decide what happens to it, while Facebook wants to have access to that data, at least in situations where users decide to return to the site—is for Facebook to let users take their data with them when they leave the site, instead of deactivating or deleting accounts. That way, users will feel that their data is protected, and, if they decide to return to the site, the valuable data will have been archived. It’s a win-win.

Deleting a Facebook account

According to the New York Times, it’s hard to delete your Facebook account.

While the Web site offers users the option to deactivate their accounts, Facebook servers keep copies of the information in those accounts indefinitely. Indeed, many users who have contacted Facebook to request that their accounts be deleted have not succeeded in erasing their records from the network.

Apparently, to successfully delete your account, you have to delete all the information it contains:

Facebook’s Web site does not inform departing users that they must delete information from their account in order to close it fully — meaning that they may unwittingly leave anything from e-mail addresses to credit card numbers sitting on Facebook servers.

Only people who contact Facebook’s customer service department are informed that they must painstakingly delete, line by line, all of the profile information, “wall” messages and group memberships they may have created within Facebook.

Based on what I read here, it seems like the basic conflict is between Web 2.0 principles—you want to keep customer data, because “data is the next Intel inside”—and customer usability. This is a site-wide problem for Facebook; their global settings aren’t comprehensive enough, and too many privacy settings have to be set individually for each app. However, I think Facebook has a good track record of responding to problems noticed by readers, so I wouldn’t be shocked if this issue was dealt with soon.

Embed Facebook Apps on any website

Facebook has announced a set of Java tools that will allow developers to embed Facebook Apps on their own webpages. As Duncan Riley at TechCrunch notes

I’m not sure anyone saw this move coming, but Facebook may have just changed the game again by essentially becoming an application host. It’s a clever move by Facebook in a year its competitors will get more serious about offering platforms themselves.

I’ll be interested in seeing how this move affects Facebook’s use as a content management system for educators. Although I doubt that it will lead to educators creating their own static web sites, it should have interesting applications, such as adding Facebook features or connectivity to existing course pages.

Huddle creates Facebook app, takes on Basecamp

Huddle has added a Facebook app to compete with Basecamp. From TechCrunch:

The Facebook integration will make your boss think you are working even when you’re on Facebook—as it allows full access to all Huddle’s tools. And the new Huddle Desktop application will let you drag and drop new documents between the desktop and Huddle’s service. Also included is OpenSAM Integration where you create, view and edit documents in Word, PowerPoint and Excel within Huddle through embedded Web Office tools from iNetWord, EditGrid and Preezo.

But unlike Basecamp the free version of Huddle includes three team workspaces, one Gigabyte of document space and unlimited team members (Basecamp doesn’t go this far on either count). After that there are paid-for options.

Facebook as courseware update

CourseFeed has added a new Facebook app that, in addition to regular Facebook course-app features like discussion walls and notes, allows students to connect to their school’s Blackboard installation. I haven’t been able to fully test out the app because it isn’t compatible with The University of Texas’s Blackboard installation yet. It does seem pretty promising, though.

One of the drawbacks to using Blackboard is that you have to go to a new website, log in, and then navigate the site’s hierarchy, which can be unnecessarily complex. For example, to send an email to my class via Blackboard, I have to log into the system and go through four steps to access the email page. CourseFeed would simplify class communication for users who use Facebook and save them the extra step of having to log into a new system for class information.

In short, for schools that use Blackboard, CourseFeed seems like a decent method for managing the site’s clunky interface.

Related: Using Facebook for course management pt. 1 and pt. 2

Facebook/Microsoft v. Google

Alex Iskold at Read/Write Web says: Google is worried, but they shouldn’t be because social networking and search are different businesses.

Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch says: Google was scared off of the deal because it was too sweet for Facebook and the search company wasn’t interested in people-based search.

John Battelle says: Facebook wins because they took Microsoft’s money, but they might have a hard time living up to the $15bil. valuation.

Josh Catone at Read/Write Web says: Microsoft wins because Facebook will add a Microsoft search bar to the system, driving all their traffic to the boys in Redmond. This can only help MS, who are now the #3 search player.

In all of this news, to me the most interesting revelation is that Facebook is clearly making a play to take over the web-as-platform model. If they can make their site the home-base for not only social networking, but, with the Facebook Platform, web apps, widgets, and content, they are going to be trying to take down Yahoo as well. From that perspective, this looks like a really canny move by Microsoft.

The cons of Facebook

Alex Iskold of Read/Write Web has posted a critique of Facebook. He argues that

• Facebook makes communication harder between friends because of its private messaging system and app noise
• Facebook is not for business networking—LinkedIn and Twitter are superior services for this task—because the news feed gives irrelevant info about “friends”
• Network effects don’t work with apps because of the long tail—a very few apps are used by a large number of users, a problem that is partially caused by the limited amount of profile space for displaying apps

In short, the Facebook news feed causes information overload by making too much content available. In addition, much of this content is irrelevant if Facebook is used for business networking.

Personally, I think this piece is a little hard on Facebook. When comparing Facebook to MySpace, Iskold argues that MySpace is superior because it is based around communication. However, I’m not positive that Facebook’s communication options are as poor as he makes them out to be, and it seems like—sans the news feed—his other critiques of Facebook could apply to MySpace as well.

Using Facebook for course management, pt. 2

Introduction

In my last post, I discussed some reasons why instructors would want to use Facebook to manage their course communication, as well as the potential drawbacks of this move. In this post, I will cover how to set up Facebook for this purpose, giving an overview of relevant apps that are necessary for making Facebook a courseware package.

Courseware basics

A good courseware system should provide at minimum 1) a central location for course communication such as announcements and 2) file sharing. A basic courseware system of this type can be had on Facebook by adding just a few apps.

Course apps
When Facebook introduced the Facebook Platform, they eliminated their own course application, allowing users to take over this feature. I have had a good experience with two course apps: Michael Staton et al.’s Courses and Colin Schmidt and Jonathan Chapman’s Courses

• Staton et al.’s Courses allows users to find a course at their school by the department and course number or create a course themselves. Users can then invite their classmates on Facebook to join the course. When logging into the app, users view a list of courses they have joined and can access tabs that let them browse for other courses, find their friends’ and classmates’ courses, rank their courses, and adjust the app’s settings. Individual course pages have links to study groups and display a course discussion board. Individual courses can also set up course chats using Vawkr (a third-party, Flash-based program which ominously announces that if you allow it to access your computer’s camera and microphone, you may be recorded).

• Schmidt and Chapman’s Courses app offers a similar set of features. Users can add new courses, but it doesn’t seem that the system has a very efficient way of browsing for courses that have already been created. It is possible to invite friends to your courses, as well as view your schedule. Individual course pages are designed like a Facebook user page, with panes for adding course notes, a course discussion board, and a course wall. While this app has more spaces for course communication collected on the course page, they all seem to be implementations of the same, discussion-board-type messaging system. Interestingly, there is also a pane entitled “Advice from Former Students”; however, it is not clear to me how helpful this feature would be. The app seems to be set up so that individual sections of the course have their own pages, and it is not clear if advice posted to one section would be aggregated on all sections.

Update: After futher use, it seems that while this app has useful tools for managing course information, it is very difficult to connect courses with other users. For that reason, it might be wise to use the Staton et al. app for now until the collaboration features of this app become better developed.

Currently the Staton et al. app has over 32,000 users while the Schmidt and Chapman app has only 7,000. While there would normally be an incentive to go with the app with the most users in order to take advantage of the greater network effects available to that app, in the case of course communication, instructors will not necessarily be interested in those effects and can just pick the app that has the features they want and invite students to join.

Document sharing apps
• Scribd allows users to post and share documents through their Facebook accounts. Presumably the files can be in almost any format: the app’s homepage says it supports the .pdf, .doc, .ppt, .xls, and .txt formats as well “etc.” Users don’t have to create accounts with the system, and permissions can be set so that documents can be seen by everyone, friends, or only the user.

• ThinkFree Docs is an app created by the online MS Office alternative, ThinkFree Office. The app requires users to create an account at ThinkFree.com. Users can then upload documents (in the .pdf, .rtf, .dot, .pot, .pps, .xlt, .csv, .txt, .hwp formats) through Facebook, share documents, and view documents shared by other users.

There are some difficulties with this app. When I added a document, my name was not listed as the user name. Instead, the user was listed as “twha”; it seemed that this might be the default user name for documents added on Facebook. For this reason, it doesn’t seem that users can manage privacy settings: documents are either published or not. Despite these drawbacks, if instructors decide to require their students to use an online office suite and settle on ThinkFree, this app could prove useful.

• Finally, instructors can also use the Share Files app by FilesAnywhere. This app is the most robust of the three, and it requires users to create an account with the website. This account comes with 1GB of free storage and allows users to upload, download, and receive files through their Facebook profile. Users can then set up password-protected folders that they can use to transfer files with others in their class. If instructors want to do any complicated file sharing as part of a Facebook-based class, Share Files is probably the best option, for both volume and security reasons.

Additional apps
Depending on the emphasis of the course, instructors can also choose applications for blogging, videos, or practically any other new media format that is currently available.

Notify course participants
The final step in setting up a Facebook course is for instructors to notify their users of the apps they need to install to their Facebook accounts. Typically, instructors will want to add a common course app, a file-sharing app, and then any other apps that are necessary for the particular course.

Conclusion

Facebook is not yet as robust a courseware medium as Blackboard or Google Groups. It does, however, offer a simple solution that should be enough for most classroom applications. Since the Facebook Platform will continue to improve and add more apps, it is likely that Facebook courseware will become a much more robust, and widely adopted, solution in the future.

Using Facebook for course management, pt. 1

Introduction

Course management systems
The use of course management systems, or courseware, like Blackboard has become widespread in U.S. colleges and universities. With the merger of Blackboard and WebCT, however, the courseware available to most instructors and students has become monolithic, a situation which is not relieved by Blackboard’s patents. While there are a number of free courseware solutions, it may not have occurred to most people that with the introduction of the Facebook Platform, the social networking site can be used for course management.

Why use Facebook for course management?
One obvious reason for using Facebook as an alternative to Blackboard is that most students already use Facebook or are at least familiar with it to some degree. If an instructor chose to use a free system like Moodle, all of his or her students would have to create accounts at the site and learn how to navigate it and its features. With Facebook, most students will already have accounts and know how to navigate the site already, so there will be fewer barriers to their adoption and use of a Facebook-based courseware system.

Another reason that Facebook makes an attractive alternative both to proprietary sites like Blackboard and open source sites like Moodle is the popularity of the site. This popularity, combined with the functionality of the Facebook Platform, encourages developers to add more features to the site—which would happen much more slowly in the form of version releases with a proprietary system like Blackboard or less frequently with less popular sites like Moodle. The Platform was introduced in the summer of 2007, and before fall it has already introduced course tracking, document sharing, blogging, and podcasting applications. It seems likely that at this pace of development, Facebook users will keep adding applications to take advantage of new technologies, a fact which will likely keep those applications on pace with educational developments as well.

Issues to consider before adopting Facebook

Secure communication
Before deciding to use Facebook to manage course communication, instructors should carefully consider how they will use the system. One chief drawback to using Facebook for course communication is that it currently does not have many controls for securely communicating with individual students. For that reason, it should not be used to send students graded work or other sensitive information.

Instructor-student relationships
Instructors should also consider how using Facebook for official class communication will affect his or her relationship with students. Traditional courseware like Blackboard automatically grant an instructor a different status in the system, giving her or him a different level of permissions when interacting with it. This is not the case with Facebook. If you decide to use Facebook as courseware, be aware that you will have no special privileges in the system, unless individual apps allow you set those privileges. Additionally, since most students will use Facebook for purposes outside of class, instructors may find that students try to contact them through the system in ways that might be unprofessional. These issues should be thought through before instructors make a decision to move to Facebook-based courseware.

Conclusion

To sum up, Facebook has a lot of promise as courseware, allowing instructors to interact with students in an environment that they feel comfortable in. There are some risks and drawbacks to using Facebook for course applications, but if instructors weigh these risks and set appropriate boundaries with students, there should be significant benefits to using the system to enhance course communication.

In my next post, I’ll suggest some Facebook Apps that can be used in a courseware system and show how they can be assembled together to make Facebook-based courseware.

Update: Using Facebook for course management, pt. 2