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Facebook have apologised for the way they rolled out a new feature with facial recognition. Now when a user uploads a photograph of their friends, Facebook can suggest which friends are in the picture for ‘tagging’. This has upset a lot of privacy conscious Facebook users because the option is switched on by default.

Facebook do have a history of just ‘switching things on’ without warning, whether it’s personal detail displays, photo albums or friend lists. Each and every time Facebook do this, there is an uproar from privacy groups across the Internet… yet they continue to use Facebook.

Here’s my view; Well done Facebook, what a great piece of functionality you’ve added to your website. Considering you have one of the busiest websites in history, you can still run facial recognition software despite the number of duff profile pictures uploaded. Genius! Facebook now knows what I look like… well if I continue to upload my photos, what should I expect?

This comes right back down to my core belief that the Internet is very much open. Facebook, like any other organisation is made up of a bunch of people I don’t know. I therefore only share details with these strangers that I don’t mind other strangers having access to. I feel others need to be reminded of these truths:

1. When you upload something, someone, somewhere receives it… you don’t necessarily know who
2. When this information is displayed online, in any form, other people have access to it
3. When this information is stored, it is backed up [copied]
4. When this information is displayed to others, it is spread and replicated
5. This information is often cached [copied] by archive servers
6. People may use this information for advertising, for ‘sample images’ or even downloaded for school projects
7. If you delete the original information or photo, it may have already been copied thousands of times and therefore is undeletable

The Internet is about sharing of information, by definition, privacy only exists when you aren’t online. If you don’t want Facebook to know what you look like, don’t upload your photos to it. If you don’t want Facebook to distribute your home address, don’t give Facebook your home address. Only one person is in charge of your personal data, and that’s you. Share only what you’re comfortable sharing and you’ll always remain comfortable with what the Internet does with your data.

Like most Facebook updates, there’s no real harm in what we can now do. We should all instead go hooray for technology, what a nifty thing it is! Anyone who can’t do that should delete their pictures and remove their profile (http://www NULL.facebook NULL.com/group NULL.php?gid=16929680703).

Google have been approaching the social market for some time, rumours have spread about the potential to buy Twitter, at one point Facebook were also eyeing up this microblogging platform before taking their own steps and adapting their news feed into a media rich frenzy of status updates, chipmunk videos and people finding strange objects in their farms.

Today Google have launched Google Buzz, it does everything the ‘better’ facebook version does but has the portability of Twitter, it also allows you to integrate all your existing social networking activities into one including Google’s own profile pages. Finally with Gmail integration, it’s easy to keep up to date without an extra window. It works on iphone and android mobile devices out of the box. so head down to http://buzz.google.com and watch the official Google Buzz video below.

So far I’m following just a couple of people, none of whom have actually made their first update, it’s a little quiet but as Google have a huge number of subscribers already to it’s other services, who knows where this will end up.

Will it replace Twitter? Not yet, Facebook tried and haven’t but there is potential for it to grow quickly with it’s subscriber base so watch this space.

Google talk hasn’t replaced Live Messenger, Google voice hasn’t replaced Skype, Google Docs hasn’t replaced MS Office and Google’s Chrome hasn’t replaced Firefox. However Google Mail, Youtube, Google Reader, Google News, Google Maps, Google Skymaps and Google Search have all rocked the world. Perhaps I’m sceptical about Google Buzz, but only time will tell.