Maybe, invading privacy is an essential part of social networks

As a Korean, I especially enjoyed the posting by Eun Sook below. I want to share my experience about Cyworld too. Cyworld is basically a Facebook for Koreans. Social networks like Cyworld have become essential communication/leisure tool for most Koreans as well.

Several years ago, this privacy issue became a major discussion topic for Cyworld users. Cyworld, after hearing the suggestions from users, introduced several new features to protect more privacy. For example, now only those who are authorized by the person can see his pictures, postings and profile. And the users can even divide their friend list into several groups. I personally made four groups and only the first group of people whom I named as “VIP” can see my every pictures, videos and so on. Of course my friends can’t know which group they are in. Another feature is this feature called “secret guestbook”. The types of messages left as “secret” can only be seen by the person who left the message and the person who is supposed to be the receiver of this message.

Ironically, after introducing these kinds of privacy protection features, Cyworld became less popular. People probably hated that they could no longer stalk people or see what was going on with others. So maybe, invading privacy is an essential part of social networking sites. Without it, social networks might not maintain its popularity as it is with the openness.

I don’t have a Facebook account so I am not familiar with Facebook at all. Does Facebook have unique functions to protect users’ privacy? If it does, has this affected popularity of Facebook? If it doesn’t, will introducing many protection of privacy features affect popularity of Facebook?