Privacy: Facebook, we have a problem

1. Google Trends are showing an increased interest in deleting Facebook accounts.

Google�s �Trends� site shows an interesting graph of people doing searches for �delete Facebook account�
(http://www.google.com/trends?q=delete+facebook+account)



What the graph is showing is that there are ten times as many searches for �delete Facebook Account� recently as there were in 2008. The rate has been rising through 2009 and is rising at a much steeper rate recently.

2. The Diaspora group is attracting a lot more money than they set out to raise

On Tuesday we blogged about the four New York college students who set out to raise $10,000 on the KickStarter site to pay for pizza and Mountain Dew over the summer while they write a �privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network� that they are calling �Diaspora.�

We checked the KickStarter page for Diaspora then and wrote: �As of mid-afternoon today their web site said they�d raised $33,179 from 1027 backers. They had been seeking $10,000 to support themselves over the summer while they finished the project.� http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/nyu-students-building-open-source.html

Well, that was three days ago. Here is what the KickStarter page says for Diaspora today:



These guys only set out to get $10,000! They�re up to $142,104 and the number is climbing by the minute!

Facebook has 350 million subscribers, so, it�s not like Farmville is going to become a ghost town overnight and there won't be anybody left to bring in the fall harvest. However, the data above is starting to point to a trend and should be Facebook�s wake-up call about the privacy issue.

Tom Kelchner