Facebook updates its Terms of Use
It would seem that it wasn’t all birthday cakes and streamers yesterday for Facebook. The social networking site has updated its terms of use (you know, the terms you read carefully, word for word, letter for letter, double-checking, triple-checking and then getting your lawyer friend to look over before you accepted to them).
Suzie White, Facebook’s Corporate Counsel for Commercial Transactions alerted users to the amends via the official Facebook Blog:
We want to let you know that today we’re updating our Terms of Use—the rules you and Facebook agree to when you sign up to use the site. We used to have several different documents that outlined what people could and could not do on Facebook, but now we’re consolidating all this information to one central place. We’ve also simplified and clarified a lot of information that applies to you, including some things you shouldn’t do when using the site.
Most of these things are pretty obvious; you probably wouldn’t ever do them. For example, you probably don’t “provide any false personal information in your profile” or “intimidate or harass other users.” But in order to help Facebook remain a safe and trusted environment, we think it’s important to specifically mention behaviors like these in the “Prohibited Conduct” section.
As always, protecting your privacy and information is of the utmost importance to us, and these updates provide you with the same level of protection you have come to expect from Facebook.
Here are some of the finer points which grabbed my attention:
Prohibited Conduct
By using or accessing the Facebook Service, you represent, warrant and agree that you will not to:
- provide any false personal information in your profile, create more than one profile, transfer your profile, create a profile for anyone other than yourself or create a page without authorization
Why hasn’t Facebook taken any action against the thousands of brand-squatting Pages that exist? These ‘fake’ pages are the bain of my life (I set-up and manage numerous Facebook Pages on behalf of my clients) – particularly when some of them actually have more Fans than the official brand Pages!
Whilst some of these Pages are set up by genuine consumers out of their love for a particular brand, they can often inadvertantly damage the brand by misrepresenting facts. What is Facebook prepared to do about these Pages?
- use your profile (as opposed to a Page) for any commercial purpose;
Does this include individuals linking to commercial services with a view to drive sales? For example Joe Bloggs spends his spare time on Facebook when he’s not running his local car mechanic business. He sometimes uses Facebook’s Share This function to keep his network informed of special offers on tyres. Should Facebook ban him for this?
- offer any contest, sweepstakes, coupon or other promotion through the Facebook Service without our prior written consent;
- use an iFrame or offer web search functionality on the Facebook Service;
When was the last time YOU checked the Terms of Use for your social network of choice? Makes for an interesting read for sure… Check out the full Facebook terms here.
As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments below. ReTweets also appreciated…
DaveWebb: RT @badgergravling: Facebook updates its Terms of Use - seems to limit engagement even more... http://tinyurl.com/dn2xc2 from: @raxlakhani 02/06/09 03:00am
thenitai: RT @badgergravling: Facebook updates its Terms of Use - seems to limit engagement even more... http://tinyurl.com/dn2xc2 from: @raxlakhani 02/06/09 02:41am
badgergravling: Facebook updates its Terms of Use - seems to limit engagement even more... http://tinyurl.com/dn2xc2 from: @raxlakhani 02/06/09 02:36am
(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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Nice post, as I hadn’t spotted the updates. And I totally agree on the brandsquatting problem – I’ve found quite a few ‘web 2.0′ services are pretty bad at responding to brand squatting problems, and I’ve certainly submitted a few and heard nothing, even weeks later.
It’s also pretty worrying that you’re now prohibited from running contests and promotions via pages without prior written consent from a site which doesn’t list any contact details or methods of how to get such consent.
It’s as if they don’t want brands to be engaging people without paying money for it – which in some respects is fair enough for their business model I guess… but it will make a lot of pages pretty dull, and it seems to have only been brought in after they’ve achieved a dominant position in the market, and people have already got involved with brand pages.
I’ve already contacted them to get some clarification on how someone would obtain written prior consent, but I suspect it won’t be given… which is fine for big campaigns, but is a real pain if you just wanted to offer a really small prize for a comment or a fun photo etc…
Very interesting article. I suppose the Terms of Service means “we promise to provide the service to you if you meet these conditions”, NOT “we promise to withdraw the service from them if you fail to meet these conditions”. Facebook can and does turn a blind eye to lots of violations.
It is interesting that they don’t want Facebook used as a place of “trade” by members. Perhaps a sign that they will some day want to charge for commercial activity on the network?
Hi Dan
It is fairly poor that Facebook doesn’t provide any links to guide on where to write for prior consent to comps and promos. You raise an interesting point when you say that it’s as if they don’t want brands to engage with fans without paying any money.
Recently, they withdrew their Polls application which was developed in-house by Facebook and allowed Pages to install review surveys.
Rumours have it that this will now form part of their premium service package which will be offered to brands.
Giving away a prize for a comment or fun photo is exactly the type of thing that I don’t want to see stopped. I suspect that they will only take action on high profile comps but still, clarification would be nice! I’d be interested in hearing whether you succeed in getting a response.
Thanks for passing by
Hi David
Judging by the last two timestamps, I think we just ‘missed each other’!
It’s true that Facebook does turn a blind eye to many indiscretions (many of which I’ve been guilty of!).
They’ve already started charging for some aspects for commercial activity and are in a position to provide detailed measurement tools to brands which are considered heavy advertisers. That said, I’ve always been impressed with the Insights that they provide Page admins free of charge. These include male/female split, age breakdown, page views, unique visitors, new fans, wall comments and photo views. I also love that they allow you to export this data into either .csv format or directly to Microsoft Excel.
However, when you want to see geographic traffic, this is something they hold back for paying brands only.
Ah well… they’ve got to earn their crust somehow I guess. I am a massive advocate of Facebook. i think that no other social network has done more to encourage brands to participate with online communities. It would be a shame to see this replaced with purely premium features. I think we’re still far off from that happening and I suspect that Facebook wouldn’t want to exclude small brands from building a presence via Pages.
Thanks for your comment. I’ve started following you on Twitter as I find your blog to be really insightful. Keep up the great work
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