Top 10 Social Network Blunders Of 2014
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media sites really stepped in it this year. Check out these 10 boneheaded moves that infuriated users.
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(Image: Hobvias Sudoneighm, Flickr)
Social networks had a big year in 2014: Facebook celebrated its 10th birthday, closed its third billion-dollar acquisition, and renewed its focus on user privacy with a number of updates and changes.
Twitter, though it struggled to meet investors' expectations in the first half of the year, ramped up activity in the second half, launching new analytics, a buy button, and a handful of other improvements set to debut in 2015.
LinkedIn also had its fair share of product launches and site updates. It rolled out a handful of new mobile apps -- including ones for contacts, SlideShare, and job listings -- along with mobile profile and home page redesigns.
But along with this year's milestones and improvements, social media sites stumbled, too. They faced lawsuits, made unpopular decisions, and invaded users' privacy. Take the ephemeral messaging app Snapchat, for example.
This year, Snapchat agreed to settle charges with the Federal Trade Commission following allegations that it made several misrepresentations to consumers about the app's security and privacy.
Snapchat differentiates itself from other messaging services with promises that users' images and videos disappear forever after the sender-designated time period expires. According to the complaint, though, these claims were false. "If a company markets privacy and security as key selling points in pitching its services to consumers, it is critical that it keeps those promises," FTC chairwoman Edith Rameriz said in a press release. "Any company that makes misrepresentations to consumers about its privacy and security practices risks FTC action."
The complaint also alleged that the app tracked and transmitted some users' location information and collected data from their address books without their consent.
Snapchat wasn't issued a monetary penalty, but the FTC will subject it to independent privacy monitoring for the next 20 years. If it violates the terms of the settlement, the company could face penalties of up to $16,000 per violation.
Snapchat wasn't alone in letting users down this year. Facebook's strong-arm approach to its Messenger app sparked controversy, while the social network also angered businesses with its plummeting post reach. Twitter lost user trust after it surreptitiously started tracking the apps used on phones, and LinkedIn landed itself in court over a privacy violation.
Curious about what else made our list? Here's a look at the other top social media disappointments of the year.
Yahoo announced back in March that it would gradually phase out third-party logins for all of its web properties. This meant that users who signed into Yahoo services using their Google or Facebook ID now would need to sign up for a separate Yahoo account to continue to access their Yahoo services.
In June, Yahoo extended this policy to the popular photo-sharing site Flickr, which caused problems for users with multiple Flickr accounts. According to Yahoo's policy, users could link only one Flickr account to a given Yahoo account. Users with multiple Flickr accounts needed to sign up for additional Yahoo accounts to access them.
In Flickr's official thread for questions related to the change, many users griped about the move. Some noted the inconvenience of managing an additional username and password, while others reported difficulties in switching to a Yahoo ID.
LinkedIn users complained for years that the social network needed a better way to deal with stalking, going as far as to start a petition on Change.org to drum up support. In February, LinkedIn responded by launching a blocking feature.
"We know members have requested a blocking feature on LinkedIn," said Paul Rockwell, its director of safety at the time. "We built this feature not only because it was a feature our members requested, but because we also knew it was the right thing to do."
Though the petitioners applauded LinkedIn for adding a blocking feature, others said it doesn't do enough to prevent stalking. LinkedIn users still can browse profiles anonymously, which makes blocking stalkers impossible.
Facebook found itself in hot water in June when the results of an experiment it conducted on users' feeds were made public. Facebook published research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in March detailing how it tinkered with the news feed algorithm of nearly 700,000 users for one week in early 2012. Researchers found that, in instances where Facebook showed users more positive posts, users were more likely to share positive updates. Conversely, when Facebook showed negative posts, users were more likely to share negative status updates.
Experts and users voiced their outrage, calling the experiment unethical and even illegal. The Electronic Privacy Center, a privacy watchdog group, filed an FTC complaint against Facebook in July, alleging that the social network deceived users and violated a 2012 consent order.
In October, Facebook apologized and outlined new guidelines that covers internal work and research that gets published. "It is clear now that there are things we should have done differently," said Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer in a blog post. "For example, we should have considered other non-experimental ways to do this research. The research also would have benefited from more extensive review by a wider and more senior group of people. Last, in releasing the study, we failed to communicate clearly why and how we did it."
In January, Google announced that it would allow users who have Gmail and Google+ accounts to email anyone who also has both accounts, even if the user didn't know the person's email address. The company said the change would be useful for people who know one another but haven't yet exchanged email addresses.
The problem: Google automatically turned on this option for all users, which opened people up to a surge of unwanted emails. Users quickly took to Twitter to voice their disapproval, and they called out the company for opting all users into it. Graham Cluley, an independent security expert and former consultant at the security firm Sophos, said in a post that, even though Google does let you opt out, the new feature would be a nuisance for users -- and even potentially dangerous.
"It's easy to imagine, for instance, how it could be used by people who were violent to send upsetting messages to a former spouse or domestic partner who has tried to create a new life away from physical abuse," he said. "It's also easy to picture public figures receiving a torrent of unwelcome messages in their inbox from fans or obsessive individuals."
Businesses struggled to reach their Facebook followers this year after the social network changed its news feed algorithm. According to a Socail@Ogilvy report, organic reach dropped from 16% of followers in 2012 to just 6% in February 2014 -- a 49% drop from peak levels. The report advised community managers to expect organic reach to approach zero by the end of 2014.
Brian Boland, Facebook's product marketing lead, claimed that, even though companies don't need to pay to be successful on Facebook, spending money on Facebook ads will improve the chances that they are. Small businesses, especially, complained they were hit hard.
"Like TV, search, newspapers, radio, and virtually every other marketing platform, Facebook is far more effective when businesses use paid media to help meet their goals," Bolan said. "Your business won't always appear on the first page of a search result unless you're paying to be part of that space. Similarly, paid media on Facebook allows businesses to reach broader audiences more predictably, and with much greater accuracy than organic content."
It's no secret that social media sites collect droves of data about you and your actions. This month, Twitter upped the ante on its data collection practices and announced it would also track the apps you install on your mobile devices. The company said this would help it do a better job of targeting content and ads.
The data that Twitter collects is limited to the names of the apps you've installed, it said on its Support page. Other information, such as what you share or how often you use the apps, won't be collected.
Nevertheless, Twitter automatically opted in all users to this new setting, called App Graph. That move upset users. On the upside, users can easily turn off App Graph and delete the data it has already collected.
A federal district judge in June ordered LinkedIn to face a lawsuit that alleges it violated users' privacy by accessing their external email accounts and downloading their contacts' addresses.
According to the plaintiffs, LinkedIn routinely sent multiple emails endorsing its products, services, and brand to potential new users whose email addresses LinkedIn "surreptitiously obtained" as part of its effort to acquire new users. They also claimed that the social network sent additional emails to those addresses when those users didn't sign up for a LinkedIn account.
"Nothing in LinkedIn's disclosures alerts users to the possibility that their contacts will receive not just one invitation, but three. In fact, by stating a mere three screens before the disclosure regarding the first invitation that 'We will not... email anyone without your permission,' LinkedIn may have actively led users astray," US District Judge Lucy Koh wrote in the ruling.
With the exception of Messenger, the standalone apps Facebook launched in 2014 tanked. In February, Facebook debuted the news reader app Paper, the first app to launch from Creative Labs, its initiative to develop and design apps for mobile devices. Though Paper managed to give users a new way to experience Facebook, it never caught on. Facebook has limited Paper downloads to iOS devices and hasn't released an update to it in months. The same is true for Facebook's Snapchat competitor, Slingshot, the interest-based app Rooms, and its latest app, Facebook Groups.
Google was the first company to release workplace diversity statistics in June, followed by several other high-tech companies. The numbers told a sobering tale: Silicon Valley has a diversity problem.
Seventy percent of all Google workers are male, the company said, with women holding just 17% of the technical jobs. Leadership roles at Google tell the same tale: 21% are held by women, 79% by men. Sixty-one percent of jobs at Google overall are held by white people.
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