If we were choosing a new Web 2.0 buzzword for 2008/2009, I might consider going with "transparency" -- as it's one to have rolled off the tongues of many a tech-savvy type, and gotten them in trouble all the same.
This is the whole point or goal of Web 2.0: To create transparency across all areas of business, government, finance, education, relationships, and so on. This is why we now have tools like Twitter, which allow us to tell everyone "What we're doing" all day long; and Facebook, where all elements of our relationships with ourselves and others are exposed in the form of short snippets, regrettable photos, and documented stances on politics, religion, petcare...
This obsession with transparency is why so many businesses are feeling compelled, if not forced, into deploying Enterprise 2.0 tools, to increase transparency both within the company and externally, with consumers. More transparency means more feedback from employees, consumers, and constituents, which means a better world for all, right?
In theory, sure, sounds great. But so far, the system is broken, for a couple reasons.
For starters, "transparency" is not really a goal for all those who claim it. All businesses, for example, might want the illusion of transparency, to make themselves look upstanding in comparison to competitors. But to achieve true transparency would likely be problematic, particularly when trying to run a business (or a government).
Take Google, for example. Here's a company that prides itself on openness and transparency, and which gets truckloads of credit for it. Yet its own blog, the Official Google Blog, ranked the sixth most popular blog in the world by Technorati, is closed off to public comments. You can email Google with feedback, but there is no way to post comments on the blog itself, which, in effect, goes against the grain of transparency, openness, and the blogosphere itself.
But Google isn't stupid. It's likely well aware that welcoming true "transparency" would set itself up for unwanted public criticism and feedback. Embodying the illusion of openness is far more productive for the company than is inviting user feedback, and actually meaning it.
Facebook may just be learning this lesson now, the hard way. As reported yesterday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg invited users to provide feedback on two new governing documents for the site, further promising that if there were many complaints about the changes to the text, those changes would be put up for a user vote. Zuckerberg presented this change as in the interests of transparency and making the world a better place (seriously, he said that), but not an hour after the documents went live, Facebook users were flooding the message boards with complaints.
Now Zuckerberg will either have to defy his users yet again by taking back his promise for a vote, or he'll have to open up his site's Terms of Service to vote by users, letting them decide how their data is used -- an unprecedented and very dangerous step for a company whose sole hope of making any money relies on free use of that data.
Should we really, as Web users, expect to be able to rewrite a Website's TOS, transforming the way it runs its business? Probably not. But we'll chime in when asked, which is why asking may have been Facebook's third largest mistake this month.
? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution
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