Will Facebook die?

Is Facebook on a path to self-destruction?

Likely not, but if you were having some of the same conversations I’ve been having with folks this week, you can feel the rising sense of frustration folks feel about the 500-million pound gorilla these days.

First came the well-documented concerns over privacy issues since CEO Mark Zuckerberg basically asked the question “privacy, who cares about privacy?”  This lead to a Time Magazine cover story and Zuckerberg’s open letter today which address changes that Facebook is planning in the coming weeks to make privacy settings more user friendly.

Then late last week, Facebook shook the marketing world to the core by announcing (actually they tried to slide it in after the fact with a developer’s forum post) that fan pages needed to have 10,000 fans or a relationship with an account executive in order to land new fans on custom landing pages. This was a blow to small businesses who have used those custom pages which look like web sites to encourage new followers and fans.

This was the social media version of biting the hands that feeds them with marketers interpreting the move as a money grab for Facebook.  The impression it was giving is that you would then need to spend lots of money with them in order to earn the right to have a custom page.  In many cases pages are also to promote special offer and contests for fans.  These same contests and offers for brands is what has attracted many of Facebook’s 500-million users to become active on the platform in the first place.

The immediate and quite angry response from users and marketers forced a quick about-face(book) and the new policy was overturned within 24 hours.

Don’t get me wrong, Facebook as the right to do whatever it wants.  But to earn the continued trust of users, it needs to present these ideas and policies in a way that makes all of us think it really cares about us in the first place.

If not, it is betraying the core principles of social media, those being openness, transparency, consistency, etc.

It will also begin losing fans by the droves and go the way of brands we always thought as untouchable, who now no longer exist.

Could that ever happen?  Would love to hear from you.