The Social

Facebook has had another awkward coming-of-age moment.

Late on Tuesday night, the massive social network reversed a change to its terms of service (TOS) that had meant that its license on user content--a longstanding but little-publicized claim to an "irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license" for promotional efforts--would no longer expire if a member deleted his or her Facebook account.

Over the weekend a popular consumer advocacy blog, The Consumerist, declared the change a cause for alarm. Buzz started to spread: could Facebook make your personal photos public? Or could it hand over that drunken karaoke video to the National Enquirer when the guy belting out Van Halen decides to run for Senate in a few years?

First, Facebook attempted to justify the change. But with a threat of legal action from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) looming, and with the modified TOS, Facebook's team likely realized that a "trust us on this one" attitude wasn't going to calm down the critics.

The pattern was remarkably similar to what unfolded in Facebook's last two big image fiascos: the introduction of the "News Feed," in which a now-popular Facebook feature was rolled out without sufficient privacy controls, and the Beacon advertising program, derided as an invasion of privacy by advocacy groups led by liberal organization MoveOn.org.

In all three situations, Facebook faced varying combinations of user revolt and blogger discord. The similarity between all of them is that in each case, Facebook could do all the explaining it wanted to, and yet critics wouldn't be satisfied until some kind of change was made. Considering Facebook can credit a big part of its success to gradual change and adaptability--in just a few years, it's gone from an elite college directory to the biggest hub for media-sharing on the Web--it ought to be willing to change when the catalyst is member demand rather than the next big trend in social networking.

It's not clear as to how big the alleged "member revolt" over the TOS change actually was. Tens of thousands of people joined protest groups in a matter of a few days, but for a social network with 175 million members across the world, that simply isn't that many. Recall that well over a year ago, when Facebook was significantly smaller than it is now, a fan group dedicated to putting comedian Stephen Colbert on the South Carolina presidential primary ballot hit 1 million members in under a week.

The important part isn't how many people were protesting. Rather, what's worth noting is that no matter how much Facebook tried to douse the flames--a company blog post from CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed that not only does Facebook's license not constitute ownership, that it was legally necessary to power the service's social features--vocal members and protest groups weren't satisfied if no change was made. Facebook emphasized, for example, that its license had to respect members' privacy settings, hence restricting any use of content to people in that person's "networks" or friends lists. It didn't do a thing.

Facebook has become a mainstream site. It needs to stay on top of the fact that as the site changes (or "evolves," to use the executive team's preferred term), it doesn't leave any unpleasant vestiges behind. Facebook's terms of service regarding content ownership and licensing, including the controversial change, wouldn't have been unthinkable for a small, closed-doors directory. But for a worldwide social-media site that houses billions of photographs (among other content), they just don't work.

Facebook's terms of service most likely still need extensive tweaking, since the whole "irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license" part of the document is still there and concern about it won't go away. Even Zuckerberg, in his post on Wednesday morning, acknowledged this: "As I said yesterday, we think that a lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective so we don't plan to leave it there for long."

It's set up an official member feedback forum for input, working with some of the members who had spearheaded TOS reform efforts.

Facebook can credit its rise to change: being willing to change to fit trends, technology, and the times. But on the flip side, that change has to be consistent. When appropriate, changes in features need to be accompanied by changes in the rules that govern those features. And a service dedicated to the evolution of social interaction needs to be in touch with what the millions of members who enable that social interaction are saying. With three big PR kerfuffles under its belt now, perhaps the company has realized that simply justifying an unpopular, privacy-sensitive change usually isn't enough.

Luckily, Facebook has consistently shown that it listens.

Microblogging service Twitter has suspended an account that claimed to be run by the Dalai Lama, according to an Agence France-Presse story.

The account purporting to belong to the Tibetan spiritual leader was only a few days old, but had already attracted tens of thousands of followers. To date, it's probably the most high-profile case of a bogus Twitter account actually getting the boot from the service.

Fake accounts that spoofed media personality Ira Glass and comedian Stephen Colbert gained notable followings until they were unmasked. In both of those cases, the impersonators offered to give the accounts to the real Glass and Colbert, but do not appear to have transferred ownership.

In the case of the Dalai Lama account, Twitter executives said that the decision to nix it was because it violated the company's terms of service. The account, after all, actually claimed to be real: its inaugural "tweet" was, "Welcome to the official Twitter page of His Holiness the Dalai Lama--administered by The Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama." The AFP story did not give any indication as to whether the real Dalai Lama or his staff had taken issue with the fake Twitter account.

UPDATE at 6:10 p.m. PT: The account is back, but its creator has explicitly acknowledged that it's not an official Dalai Lama Twitter account.

There's no more room for smut and naughty bits on build-your-own social network service Ning, according to a post on the company blog. Ning has announced that it will shut down its "Red Light District" of adult content, and on January 1 will formally ban it.

"We are exploring ways for adult networks that will no longer be available on Ning to export their content in addition to their members," the post by CEO Gina Bianchini read. The reasoning, she explained, is that it's costly and problematic--something you just can't deal with in a recession.

Advertisers don't like it, Bianchini said. "Our ad partners aren't big fans of the adult networks and therefore require us to identify adult networks or risk our healthy advertising revenue," she explained. "We don't want to be in the policing business and, unchecked, that's where this is heading."

And if legal adult-content networks are allowed, the illegal ones invariably weasel their way in, Bianchini said, and that means more work for a small team. The number of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notices is also higher for adult networks: "Compared to our other social networks on the Ning Platform, the additional work created by adult networks alleged to have violated the copyrights of others is enough for us to discontinue adult networks in favor of investing time and energy in growing the Ning Platform from here," Bianchini wrote.

Ning isn't the only site to be cracking the whip on porn. YouTube, owned by Google, said on Tuesday that it's "tightening the standard for what is considered 'sexually suggestive.'"

Bianchini co-founded Ning with Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, and famously raised a $60 million round of funding in anticipation of a "nuclear winter." Guess that was a good move.

A game on Facebook's platform called "PackRat" has been causing some issues for the site, according to a thread in the game's discussion forum.

The aim of PackRat appears to involve amassing graphical "cards" to chalk up points--sort of like the original Pokemon game, some cards are easy and common while others are rare. One of the ways to get new cards is by "stealing" them from friends, so having a huge network of friends who are also playing the game gives PackRat players a big advantage. Reading on in the forum, it looks like one PackRat strategy involves "friending" and "defriending" people frequently so that players can allow and block access to one another's cards. Others appear to have set up accounts strictly to play PackRat. This has apparently sent Facebook into damage control mode.

Several PackRat players say they have received account deletion notifications, and one was posted to the PackRat forum. "Please note that Facebook accounts are meant for authentic usage only," the e-mail read. "This means that we expect accounts to reflect mainly 'real-world' contacts (i.e. your family, schoolmates, co-workers, etc.), rather than mainly 'Internet-only' contacts."

Facebook could've smelled a rat (pun completely intended) if an account had an unusual level of activity when it came to adding and removing friends, as well as little else going on besides the PackRat application. It's also possible that individual PackRat members have set up multiple accounts for more effective gameplay.

The e-mail continued: "As stated on our home page, Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you, not a 'social networking site.' It is meant to help reinforce pre-existing social connections, not build large groups of new ones."

In other words: Facebook considers a game that encourages friend-list manipulation as strategy to be perverting the idea of the "social graph," a concept that CEO Mark Zuckerberg holds dear. Facebook doesn't want to be rival MySpace, which not only encourages the formation of new connections but which birthed a legitimate C-list celebrity in Tila Tequila--who became famous for having more MySpace friends than any other member and wound up with a dating show on MTV."

This revelation is not news, despite what a recent flurry of activity on Techmeme might have you think. Facebook has always banned "fake" profiles and has reportedly also taken action against "serial adders" (site members who simply try to fill huge friends lists, typically by adding attractive people) if other users report their accounts. Executives also are very careful not to call the site a "social network" when speaking publicly, as though it comes with negative connotations.

The e-mail ended: "If this is in direct contrast to what you expected as legitimate Facebook usage, I apologize for any confusion. This is simply the intention behind the site."

But it's an awkward move for Facebook to make, because there simply isn't a way to prove that everyone with an account on the site is "real-life friends" with everyone on their friends lists. I'm pretty sure Robert Scoble hasn't met all of the 5,000 people he famously has on his Facebook contacts roster, for example.