Web 2.0 summit is a nice place to record interesting thoughts from many renowned executives of Silicon Valley. Today Social media titan Facebook’s CTO Bret Taylor has appeared on the panel of Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco. Last Year Mark Zuckerberg – Chief Executive Officer of Facebook – was part of the panel with John Battele, Executive Chairman of Federated Media. But this time due to some hectic schedule he was unable to take part and on his behalf Bret Taylor has represented Facebook in the conference. However, in his 15 minutes of session he grabbed the attention by throwing his thoughts on an interesting question, asked by John:
whether Facebook and Google Plus are going to “get over it and start sharing… I would love to have used my Facebook contacts to populate my Google Circles and vice versa. Will there be a time when data will move between both platforms?
Apparently, Facebook may be willing to setup a cross communication and integration platform (even with GPlus probably) in social media market – only if the security reaches to extreme level. And if this will ever come into existence, then in my view, it will be the most beneficial for all of them. Users will also get benefited and can share activities across the platforms.
On a question about data portability he wisely answered :
“I think data portability is interesting because it’s very easy in the context of single-user services. Bringing your data elsewhere is simple then. It gets complex with the intersection of several features. And an example of that is the address book on Facebook. If I put my contacts there and put privacy settings on, what are my rights? Should you have the ability to take that data to another site with different privacy? Recently the site added a box that people could use to allow their friends to download data from their profile. The majority of people on Facebook have modified their privacy settings. I think the people who use Facebook a lot are very, very aware of privacy settings. They know exactly what their current boyfriend or ex can see. As our service has grown, there’s a lot of increasing scrutiny on how we provide our service. If we can make your privacy controls so transparent that you are comfortable with sharing data on Facebook, that’s good. We certainly hope to make the privacy settings as accessible as possible”.
He was really happy with users behavior of Facebook and also praised their intelligence. He really liked the way users have modified their privacy setting.
On the question about activity log, Facebook is planning to launch in coming days, Taylor replied :
“Activity log is a new feature, part of our timeline. It’s a private page that’s the backend of your timeline, all content you’ve shared on Facebook for all time. You can browse it, and navigate by time. It’s a single place on Facebook where you can see all your information. If we can give people granularity over the control of sharing data, the more these products will see. If you’re going for a job interview, you can go back and change photos of yourself posted in college. A lot of that was there before but we made it more accessible”.
Facebook CTO also added that for the company ads are not prior; they give priority to users and now they are concentrating more on users behavior rather than advertisement. He is expecting that new timeline will be liked by the users and they will add more users in coming days.
On a question about the statement given by Sean Parker that power users of Facebook has gone to Google and Twitter, CTO responded:
“People who were in college when Facebook was only available to students make up the power users; Facebook is very concerned about addressing their needs for nuanced controls and features. He worries that Facebook has moved toward complexity too often. Smart friend lists have been well received. Subscribe is also designed to reach a broad audience. Our news feed is really good at finding you the most engaging content. The folks who have turned on subscribe have seen unprecedented levels of engagement. I’m really bullish about that feature because it has a lot of potential to reach all 800 million users”.
In the conference an audience asked Taylor whether Facebook is on the track of Myspace. He responded:
“The site is really important. Our vision is that social isn’t just a destination. It’s about personalization and discovery of apps. We want to make Facebook an ecosystem, and a compelling system, a platform and not a destination”.
Hope you all agree with the thoughts expressed at Web 2.0 summit. We would be delighted to see your cross- thoughts on Facebook’s Chief Technology Officers’ state of mind.
