The business of Facebook

[Commentary] Facebook finally implemented the privacy enhancements it promised several months ago. And oddly enough, the world now knows more, not less, about many of the social network's 350 million users. Although that's not what the public may have expected, it's no accident. And as disturbing as it may be to privacy advocates, the change may have the welcome effect of opening users' eyes to the reality of their relationship with Facebook. Simply put, it's not their friend. Why would Facebook do such things? Because it's a business, and key elements of that business are attracting traffic and trading in at least some of the information users disclose. In fact, even as the company rolled out its new privacy tools, it prodded people to change their privacy settings to expose their personal information and posts to the entire Internet. Unless they reject the new default settings imposed by Facebook, everything they say on the network and much of their information will be available to anyone searching through Google, Yahoo or other search engines. These moves make sense from Facebook's perspective (assuming the public puts up with them). But for users, the lesson is that Facebook and other sites will not guard their personal information. To the contrary, such data are currency to the operators of social networks, and it's up to users to watch their own wallets.