The recent Facebook ToS story has been interesting to both observe and be a part of. It points directly at the shifts and changes we’re experiencing in the new communication landscape. It prompts anyone looking to interact in what I like to think of as the “digital porch” to stop and take notice of who “owns” what we say and do on the porch, and what we and others do with it.

That’s right, the question is—who owns the content of our social interactions? Keyword here being “inter,” as in between two people. Which person owns that interaction? 

Facebook recently changed their terms to say they owned your interactions forever. Movie stars and politicians are often presented with the conundrum of who owns their images and outbursts. We as a general population have not thought like this for our personal images and sayings.

When I became aware of Facebook changing their terms, I did what I often do—I dug into the social space. That’s interesting as I think of it now, I was using the thing in question to investigate itself. Anyway, I was interested to see what people had to say about the ToS change. Then the post from Zuckerberg came out.  

“Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who they share it with.”

That’s debatable. 

Moreover, it didn’t feel like he was writing it, but more like his lawyers were. (Incidentally, I wonder when Mark will start to talk and interact in the community when there’s no negative press to combat. Give Tony at Zappos a call, Mark, he gets it.) Then I dug in further by reading the actual terms and privacy policies on the Facebook site. Have you?

I left paralyzed by knowledge. Dan and Chip Heath would call this kind of conundrum the “curse of knowledge.” I know Facebook fairly well; Hello Viking develops applications for the platform, after all. But now I’m going to attempt to forget what I know and write what I feel.

This is an amazing time of change fueled by drastic and rapid alterations in both the economic and communication realities of our culture. It’s easy to feel excited and afraid simultaneously. Excitement comes from looking at the dramatic opportunities available to us due to new technologies and such. Fear comes quickly because so much of what has changed in our economy and communication are things we took for granted and assumed would always be what they were. (Matt Miller’s new book, Tyranny of Dead Ideas, anyone?)

I feel for Facebook. I really do.

Just try this problem on from their side—sit down and write out the terms and policies and principles for your interactions with your friends, customers and community. Then go get them to sign it.

Ok, now try to live by those terms and only by those terms. Don’t go changing them.

My guess is that you won’t get it right the first time. Further, remember we’re in a rapidly changing climate where what you thought was stable isn’t. Call when you have a problem. I think I’ll hear from you soon.

As interactions in the social space continues to increase so, hopefully, does our trust in one another. We’re building relationships. The question I have is how the platform we’re using (in this case Facebook) should act so we can trust them for reasons beyond them saying, “Trust us.” I would love it if they swallowed their own pill and interacted with us in the social space—gave us reason to trust them. Give us proof beyond what the lawyers wrote. Moreover, it’d be great if Facebook asked before they just changed the terms of our relationship in a way that gives them so much more power. 

As it stands now, Facebook has reverted to the old ToS. They did this switch, too, without first asking. I bet if they were more open and social—actually using the very platform they represent to communicate honestly with their customers—it’d be easier to forgive them.

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UPDATE: Looks like Facebook is going open-source with its ToS, soliciting feedback from users in regards to how FB’s terms should be written.

Collectively, the employees of Hello Viking are on Facebook a few hours a day, and we think that’s good business. It’s become yet another interface for completing internal company business, for client outreach and project research and for talent connectivity. While we’ve been maintaining personal and family material, obligations and connections via Facebook, the system has naturally extended into our professional lives. So this recent mixup over the new Terms of Service had both personal and professional ramifications.

We first read about Facebook’s “new” ToS on Consumerist (after someone tweeted it, of course). Facebook can use any content we upload for any purpose, at any time, without recourse or compensation, even if we close our account? Did we really just read that? Yikes. We were freaking out. And like many, we probably jumped to all kinds of inaccurate conclusions. 

Later that day we read Zuckerberg’s blog post in reaction to the reaction. Our takeaway—Zuckerberg did not have much fun writing that post. And how many lawyers were standing over his shoulders before he hit “Publish?” And that’s really the issue here, isn’t it? It’s about rights to content, and it’s about the value of those rights. Zuckerberg makes an interesting case when he notes…

“People want full ownership and control of their information so they can turn off access to it at any time. At the same time, people also want to be able to bring the information others have shared with them—like email addresses, phone numbers, photos and so on—to other services and grant those services access to those people’s information. These two positions are at odds with each other.”

But are they really at odds? On the one hand, it’s just code. Technology can easily bridge these two positions. In fact, that’s what’s inevitable. 

The keywords here are “ownership” and “grant.” Those are legal terms. The technology powering all that’s great about Facebook isn’t the issue here. It’s fear of legal repercussions around misuse or appearance of misuse of someone’s rights to content.

And then, Facebook changed its tune. As Business Week told us yesterday, the Electronic Privacy Information Center was prepared to file charges with the FTC over Facebook’s revised ToS, which appears to have been enough to convince Facebook to retreat.

So we’re back where we started. Sort of. Maybe. 

Old ideas about content ownership are in flux. Are we tipping, and if so, to where?

In the ever-connecting, always uploading, always sharing new world we’re building together—who owns what, and to what degree? This story highlights the painful necessity of reading Terms of Service before you hit “Accept,” except who has time to do all that when you’ve got social work to do?

From a marketing standpoint, this story reminds us of the necessity to consider the rights of our audience when we create functionality and/or take possession of their information. At the very least, we need to be upfront, clear and open in communicating how rights will be handled—witness this related story from Hulu regarding the removal of some services due to rights and content. 

I’m sure the story will continue.

p.s. Title of this post not making sense? Look back to 2001.

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UPDATE: Looks like Facebook is going open-source with its ToS, soliciting feedback from users in regards to how FB’s terms should be written. Wow. That was fast.

We had coffee recently with David Bagley, the CEO of Valtira. They make customized, automated landing pages. It’s a great product. 

David mentioned his background was retail merchandising, and this prompted a discussion around a difference many of us are seeing between the act of acquiring customers or awareness, and the act of converting said customers. Call it the difference between marketing and merchandising.

So much digital effort is directed towards getting people “in the door.” But all too often, that’s where the effort stops. They’ve arrived at your site. Maybe it’s a return trip. Now what?

You’ve marketed, and reaped a result.

But that’s not the end of the story. In the bricks and mortal retail world, the first action is typically referred to as marketing. Marketing gets customers in the door. Once inside, merchandising takes over—affecting placement of products, signage, display materials, ambiance and employee staffing. The science of merchandising is conversion. What actions can we take that will drive you to put more items in your cart and pay for them?

Online, we oftentimes forget to merchandise. We don’t customize landing pages for paid search, banners or other traffic driving initiatives. We forget to budget for and enact re-targeting. We don’t consider a holistic content strategy required to continuously engage prospects on deeper, more personal levels as they move through our site or opt-in to email, or subscribe to our RSS.

Merchandising is a lot of work. But so is Marketing. 

The era of the finite campaign is over. Ask yourself—when is a corporate website ever “done?” Of course, it never will be—as new content is continually integrated, customers are responded to and conversation blooms. That process of never being done is essentially what digital merchandising is all about. So a marketing plan that doesn’t acknowledge or integrate the act of digital merchandising in 2009 and beyond is probably less than half a plan. 

The challenging solution is as much about budgeting and staffing for digital merchandisers inside the marketing department (ala Zappos), as it is requiring marketing and advertising to plan for “what happens after” the acquisition or awareness campaign has been living for a while. If someone digs your TV spots, clicks on your paid search ad, engages with your mobile app, or visits your site—what’s supposed to happen an hour later, three weeks later? How will you maintain the conversation you paid to start?  

Thanks for the coffee and conversation, David.

[Image via Flickr, credit: inetmer, all rights reserved]

Recruiting the best and the brightest is an ongoing competition among the big four global professional services firms. Perks and salary aside, top accounting majors often look for distinctions in corporate culture before deciding which offer to accept.

PricewaterhouseCoopers has an advantage in this space—its ongoing “green intiatives.” We helped the firm understand how to leverage that distinction in a relevant way within Facebook, by creating a personal carbon calculator specifically tuned for college students.

PwC is the first U.S. professional services firm to announce U.S. carbon reductions efforts (a 20% decrease by 2012). PwC has also been appointed as the advisors of the global Carbon Disclosure Project. 

To help promote and expand on this story, we collaborated with the firm to create a personal carbon calculator Facebook application called “Carbon Bigfoot by PwC.” (You’ll need to be logged into your FB account to view the app.)

The carbon calculator space is messy. Despite the flurry of data, most calculators are designed to help homeowners, just once—and induce enough guilt to solicit a carbon offset donation. And if you input the same data across 30 different calculators, you’ll get 30 different results. 

We took a different approach.

Carbon Bigfoot is architected and designed for college students, who generally don’t own their own homes, and often live in more than one location over the course of a year and probably have a lot of electrical devices. Instead of focusing on a singular, annual measurement, we decided to engineer a system that asks students to participate monthly—like a gym membership.

The other key difference is visual. Most calculators are entirely devoted to intense data entry. We developed a system of ten characters that visually demonstrate your impact as your carbon footprint grows—which you can share and promote via Facebook tools. And we peppered the experience with insights to help participants gain useful insights as they evolve from a starting point of zero impact through Global Human, EuroFoot, Leadfoot and several other stages up to Maxifoot. 

Carbon Bigfoot by PwC is meant to be played with, to encourage ongoing conversation among students and help them see how even small efforts can build a positive result over time, much like the ongoing conversations and carbon impact-reduction happening inside PwC.