Facebook Places Launches in Australia

I wanted, this week, to take a look at how one of the major online newspapers treated the launch of Facebook Places in Australia.  This is a topic that I’ve covered before, when the application was first launched in the States, however I looked at how the story covered by a different major newspaper and a few well-known blogs. 

As I’ve mentioned before, Places has been launched as the Facebook equivalent to the very popular iphone application, FourSquare.  It’s essentially a location-based application used to “check in” at a particular location and find out information about a particular business or surrounds.  Whilst initially seen as a direct competitor to FourSquare, it would seem that both FourSquare and Gowalla are tieing their products in with Facebook Places.

The article in the Sydney Morning Herald last Thursday is largely a copy-based article, with little imagery.  It contains one image of screenshots of the application, but otherwise the layout is fairly content-heavy.  There are numerous links surrounding the article itself, as well as ads and other drivers to other content.  The advertising displayed on this article could be a little more relevant to the likely reader – A Woolworths ad may have been better places somewhere else on the site.

As for the content of the article itself, I think the journalist does a good job of objective reporting and discussing some important issues surrounding the application’s release.  The story focuses largely on the privacy concerns surrounding Places and other location-based applications.  Whilst this is not an entirely new angle (much talk already exists around Facebook and Privacy).  The Journalist uses relevant quotations from Places’ product manager, giving the article credibility and authenticity.  However, I do think some of the objectivity is lost by the use of the phrase "Stalkbook" in the headline.  I feel this is an unnecessary play on people's pre-existing privacy concerns and somewhat negates the level of objectivity achieved through the main article.

Facebook Places and concerns over privacy

There has been much talk today over the release of the Facebook "Places" application in the US, a rival to iphone apps like Foursquare.  I looked at 3 different articles on this particular unveiling and the different ways they were treated by each publication.

Firstly, I noticed this article in the Daily Telegraph.  This article fairly blandly reported the release of the app, without really giving an opinion or going for a particular angle.  It is interesting to note that the article quotes "Some experts", without actually noting who they are, which does make you question the credibility of the article.  Not to say that the expert opinions are untrue, however their authenticity could be doubted.  The article does go to the trouble to quote the Facebook vice-president, however doesn't actually cite the reference for that quote.

This article only briefly mentions (in one short sentence) the privacy concerns that seem to be rattling the internet community at the moment.  However, this article this evening on Mashable, seems to go into much more depth on the privacy concerns.  Mashable is a social media news site, so it is understandable that it would report such a social-related story in greater depth.  In fact, it ran a number of stories on the app today:

http://mashable.com/2010/08/19/facebook-places-iphone
http://mashable.com/2010/08/19/facebook-places-guide
http://mashable.com/2010/08/18/facebook-places-poll
http://mashable.com/2010/08/18/facebook-launches-its-location-features-live

The Mashable article cites other Facebook privacy related concerns that were raised earlier in the year (in fact, the Daily Telegraph article didn't provide any hyperlinks at all).  The also cite the ACLU, a civil liberties group in Northern California; a reference that may be a valid one, but I do question how reputable they may be.  They may be well know in America, however they are not known to an Australian audience.

I actually found the ACLU article cited by Mashable a very interesting read.  They've taken quite a different approach and seems to be quite fear-focused.  Whilst the Daily Telegraph report does not differ much to a basic press release, the ALCU is focusing on the monster that Facebook appears to have become.  The use of taglines, such as "facebook is rolling out a "here now", privacy later", and phrases like "safeguarding your location information" clearly have a specific, persuasive purpose; to convince users to be wary of the app.  It is quite successful in doing so.

It really felt like there were 3 tiers of reporting here on the same issue:
- The Daily Telegraph with its fairly bland, seemingly-unresearched (or at least not originally researched) Press release
- Social media report from Mashable which felt fairly impartial
- ACLU website's somewhat scare-mongering report on facebook and it's failure "to build in some other important privacy safeguards."

Use of Social Media by the Police

I found this article on Gizmodo today regarding a group of New Jersey Police that are using Facebook as a means to name and shame criminals in their area.  It is an interesting article and raises a few issues around the privacy of such "Name and Shame" processes.  However, I wanted to review this article from an Information Architecture standpoint, rather than the story itself.

GIZMODO article header, 14/08/10

"More" dropdown

The navigation used across the site is very clear and simple, outlining the 5 major areas of interesting, with a "More" drop down that encompasses all other categories within the site.  The page does show a simple breadcrumb for this article, which is purely "online".  As Gizmodo articles tend not to be hidden down deep within multiple sections, the breadcrumb does not provide much information other than that it fits within the "Online" section.  The other important thing to note about the article header is the prominent position of the Facebook "Like" button.  It is at the top of the page on the right hand side.  This is a very common and easily recognised position for such an element. The remainder of the share functionality sits at the bottom of the page  It also indicates the importance Gizmodo places on sharing via social media; appropriate for a site that is focused on technology and all things online.

An element that I really like about this article header is that both the Author and the Date are hyperlinks. This allows the user to find more articles by the particular author, as well as additional news from that particular day.  It is an effective way to encourage users to move around the site and spend more time there.

There are a number of hyperlinks included within the article itself, including the facebook page in question.  The article does also link to the Courier Post article from which the story was obviously based.  This particular paper structures their page quite differently for this story.  Their header includes similar functionality (clickable author name, social media share functionalites), however they place a very large banner add within the middle of the page, right within probably some of the most important real estate on the page.

Courier Post page structure for same article

This is a highly unusual place for a banner ad and one that I find incredibly distracting.  The page looks incredible messy and I found it quite difficult to focus on the story itself when compared to the clean and streamlined Gizmodo page.