Facebook is going through a bit of a rough patch lately. It was bound to happen at some point; it’s one of the largest public data repositories ever created, and its users have started to question how their data is being used.

For all the data it holds, Facebook has done an amazing job giving unprecedented control over what data users want to share with their friends or with the world. It’s an overwhelming amount of control for most users, though.

Forbes Magazine asked a few well-known designers how they’d choose to rearchitect Facebook’s privacy controls (thanks to Chris Messina for the link). While each designer provided some innovative improvements for advanced controls, I think they all miss the larger point: most users just don’t care about controlling every facet of their information. Most users want simplicity.

Users need to be comfortable while editing their information. Two ways to ease the burden on users would be to create preset privacy levels and to combine profile and privacy editing. Below are some mockups that illustrate these ideas.

Preset privacy levels

The New York Times recently reported that there are over 170 options for privacy in the current Facebook privacy system. That’s an incredible amount of control, and power users love the ability to tweak every possible setting. But what about the casual Facebook user (in other words, the vast majority of people who use the site)? Facebook needs to make privacy as easy as possible.

Facebook instead could change their main privacy screen to show an general selection screen. It would present users with a few different preset levels that would share varying levels of information on the network.

The “See what’s shared” links on each preset level would open a help screen with details about each piece of information.

This general setting would be enough for most users. Unless the user chooses the Advanced option, no other privacy management is necessary within the system.

Combined profile and privacy editing

Facebook needs to show that privacy control is a key part of information management. One way to accomplish this would be to show a privacy tab in the main (newly reworked) profile editing interface.

The Privacy Overview tab would show the level selection screen illustrated in the previous section. In most cases, the level would take care of all privacy management for a user. If he wanted additional control (in other words, if he chose the Advanced privacy level), he would see privacy controls next to each facet of information.

Combining privacy settings with profile editing stresses that the control is important and simplifies management even for power users.

Facebook has an amazing system of rules in place for privacy management, but right now it’s just too complicated for the majority of people. What other ways could Facebook use to simplify privacy management for its users?

With last week’s iPad announcement, Apple hopes to start a technology revolution. Again. They nudged the smartphone market into the future with the release of the iPhone. Just a couple of years later, many of the over 140,000 iPhone applications available for download or purchase have pushed mobile development to new heights.

Now developers have a new platform to test their experiments. But while the iPhone ushered in a wave of applications geared around portability and location, the iPad will likely drive developers to create completely new user experiences.

The iPad offers developers a blank 9.7-inch canvas on which they can develop any interface they choose – with the added benefit of multi-touch, positioning sensors, and more. While tablets are not a new concept, they’ve always been built atop the recognized interface and conventions of a traditional computer. Users expect a certain experience with these sorts of applications; if it doesn’t feel familiar, there’s often resistance.

On a new form factor like the iPad, the resistance to change almost completely disappears. The iPad is a new experience from the start and lacks the complex interface of normal computers, allowing developers to spend less time focusing on what people expect and more time focusing on what is natural.

Developers around the world have a new, intuitive interface for applications. Expect to see some true innovation for the iPad over the next few months.

One of the latest pieces of conversation around the Twittersphere and blogosphere has been the acquisition of online footwear (, etc.) merchant Zappos by online behemoth Amazon.com. Zappos, known for their unique culture and unrelenting devotion to their customers, has understandably faced a pile of scrutiny and doubt over the future of the Zappos way of business. Even if Zappos remains an independently-run entity from Amazon, how could they possibly maintain the culture they’ve worked so hard to achieve?

Instead, I’d like to propose a different theory. Amazon’s already attempted to venture into the world of customer-focused service – in the shoe business, no less – with their own Endless.com. Although Amazon’s customer service reputation has generally improved as the company matures, they don’t hold a candle (or throw a shoe at, if you will) the CS credibility held by Zappos.  What if Amazon intends to use Zappos as a model for a new, company-wide customer service philosophy?

What do you think? Could Amazon pull off the Zappos culture? Is that business philosophy even feasible in a company of Amazon’s diversity and size? How could they make that happen (and make it work)?

The home page over at Bing.com – Microsoft’s newest generation of search – is a huge step forward from past offerings. The page is simple, inviting, and seems to have a better pulse of the current trends on the Web.

It surprised me that Microsoft chose to include a seemingly random image as the background of the page. The image changes daily and includes several hover spots, each of which reveals a fact related to the picture and a link to a suggested relevant search query. Two of these links are duplicated in the footer bar of the page.

It seems to me that the background image of Bing is a huge missed opportunity for Microsoft. Although its designers chose to include popular searches on the home page and even may include posts from Twitter in search results, Bing’s random home page image stops its realtime cred in its tracks.

Instead, Bing should include a background image that is relevant to the news of the day (or at least a relevant holiday). With the amount of media available on the Web, this shouldn’t be a huge task; maybe they could scan the Wikipedia page for the current day to find a relevant event. (Today’s pic could be an archived shot of Endeavour or an early concert image of the Rolling Stones in commemoration of their first show together). I’d give them huge bonus points if they chose a Creative Commons image each day; I hear now they’re even easier to find.

Remember viral campaigns? A year or two ago, viral media – videos, sites, or entire campaigns that were so quirky or shocking that friends forwarded them through networks in a viral fashion – was the Holy Grail of the tech marketing world. Now that the viral world has gone mainstream (with some marketing firms even “guaranteeing” a viral smash), the search is on for the next Grail on the web.

Now we’ve found it: the trending topics list on Twitter. Nestled among breaking news topics are a spectrum of memes, games started by celebrity Twitterers, and – you guessed it – ads in the form of giveaways. The most recent participant in the race of trending visibility is an ancient content management company that is giving away free MacBooks to random Twitter users that choose to retweet their company’s hashtag… and they’re putting Twitter’s paid sponsors to shame. TechCrunch reports that the latest stunt is using 2.5% of all Twitter traffic.

Twitter trending is the next wave of guerilla brand promotion online, but its lifetime is sure to be short-lived. If other companies hop on the trending bandwagon, there’s likely to be a competition for the limited space on the trending list; that means that there could be more promotions for bigger prizes down the road. But if the 2.5% spirals up with a flurry of new promotions, Twitter users are bound to tire of seeing sanctioned ads for random companies in the streams of the users they follow.

Where’s the tipping point between entering yourself in a hashtag promotion and becoming a burden for spamming a stream?