Gaida Zirkelbach, an attorney in Gunster’s Technology and Entrepreneurial Companies practice, talks to TechNewsWorld about the recent consumer backlash to Facebook’s conversion of users’ listed email addresses, switching all to @facebook.com, in an apparent effort to funnel site visitors to Facebook’s email in-box rather than their own.
“People generally do not like companies making choices for them, or even worse, changing a choice that has already been made,” Zirkelbach told TechNewsWorld today. “So, it’s not surprising that Facebook users feel that Facebook is being ‘obnoxious,’ has ‘overreached,’ has ‘attacked’ them and has caused ‘an enormous breach of trust,’ to use some of the phrases I’ve seen online.”
And yet, Facebook’s unilateral move may do what it intended to do: boost usage of the @facebook.com address.
“For users that are interested in privacy, that don’t mind checking their Facebook in-box and that aren’t really close with all of their Facebook ‘friends,’ using the Facebook email address on their profile might be a better option,” Zirkelbach said. “Their ‘friends’ will not see their real email address.”
Read the entire TechNewsWorld story: Facebook’s email bungle: not what it did but how it did it.
