Published on the Compete.com blog on 19 February 2008

Does privacy matter to most Facebook users? Take a look at the chart below, and judge for yourself (weekly unique visitors to facebook’s privacy settings pages):

Even after all the recent mainstream media coverage and debate surrounding Facebook’s controversial beacon program, online privacy in general, and Facebook making available universal beacon opt-out — traffic to Facebook’s privacy settings pages has essentially been flat. NOT A GOOD SIGN!

It’s likely that the average Facebook user DOES care about their privacy, and know they should do something about it, but are mostly unaware or don’t know what they can or should do. Should Facebook be doing more around online privacy education? There is a lot of unintended sharing going on, and I think it is in Facebook’s long term best interest to do so.