I was pointed to a tweet by Matt Cutts that indicates he’s “deactivated” his Facebook account:
He in turn points to a GigaOM post that explains how to block some of the “instant personalization” changes that Facebook is implementing as part of its Open Graph announcements on Wednesday.
This is a fairly drastic step by Matt; is it a protest or is he personally concerned about privacy?
Postscript: Apparently this is a wider “movement” than just Matt. Other Google engineers are doing the same: http://bit.ly/dwKHim
Thanks Tim Cohn for pointing this out.
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Premium member since 01/2009
Knowing Matt, he has never liked Facebook because it is “closed” where you cannot easily get your data out of it. So likely a protest of some kind.
Premium member since 01/2009
Does anyone else see the irony in him pointing to a post about blocking personalization when the search engine he works for provides personalization that they make incredibly difficult to turn off?
Sometimes it is just too easy:
Google’s Eric Schmidt:
“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/48975
Premium member since 12/2008
The downside is now when you search for Matt Cutts on Facebook, you only end up at an unofficial fan page:
http://searchengineland.com/matt-cutts-deactivates-facebook-account-40543
I’d have encouraged him to create his own fan page and focus his activities there, if he wanted a way to be active on Facebook but have less to worry on the privacy side. That’s what I did back in December.
Of course, it’s still complicated in that you do have to have a personal account to manage that fan page — you can’t “act” as the fan page itself, which means some privacy worries remain.
If it is a protest over privacy, will Matt close his Buzz account now?
http://www.google.com/profiles/109412257237874861202#buzz
I think they’ve have a few issues, as well :)
Without further “personalization” Facebook’s annual revenue per user – $1 Billion / 500 million users = $2.00 a year – will continue to languish @ just $0.005 a day from each user.
I think the main reason is that FB is slowly getting into the search market as they annouced they will be searching websites and etc and I believe they are the only one that can beat Google and redefine search from its current boring google\yahoo style of search to something more comprehesive.
I think Facebook will make google old news in a couple years or even less
Search engine Optimization can spread in many ways like this using a social media. Facebook really gives a lot of help to broadcast many links… And I think facebook wants their consumer profile be private…
Now isn’t that a good example of the pot calling the kettle black!
Luckily the Matt Cutts Facebook fan page is still alive and kicking.