Facebook privacy is a public relations nightmare

Although the calendar officially identified May 31 as Memorial Day here in the U.S., it also doubled as Quit Facebook Day, a grassroots protest mounted in response to growing concerns over the social networking giant's approach to privacy controls. Turned out to be a tempest in a teapot: According to Quit Facebook Day's organizers, only about 31,000 Facebook users pledged to delete their accounts, a narrow fraction of the estimated 450 million Facebook members worldwide. It's possible other users have abandoned the site in quieter, less dramatic fashion, of course, but the bottom line is that Facebook remains a habit few people can shake, at least until something new and even more addictive comes along.

Facebook is more dominant than ever across the mobile landscape: Thirty-nine percent of smartphone owners used the Facebook application in the last 30 days, more than any other app, according to a new survey compiled by The Nielsen Company--second-place Google Maps was used by 33 percent of consumers in the last month, trailed by The Weather Channel (21 percent), music recommendation app Pandora (20 percent) and video site YouTube (19 percent). About 58 percent of iPhone owners use the Facebook app, more than any other application available for download from Apple's App Store; it's also the most popular app among BlackBerry owners (39 percent), although it slips to second place on Android (51 percent), behind only Google Maps with a whopping 67 percent. (Click here for much more data from the Nielsen study.)

Writing on The Facebook Blog in mid-May, product manager Sid Murlidhar notes that more than 100 million people are now actively using the company's Facebook Mobile solution, available from more than 200 operators in 80 international markets. Facebook is looking to further cement its mobile stature with the recent introduction of 0.facebook.com, a new mobile site optimized for speed and efficiency, targeted to users in emerging markets. According to Facebook, the free 0.facebook.com effort includes all the key features of the social networking experience while eliminating components that complicate and slow down the process--users can still update their status, view their News Feed, comment on posts and send and reply to messages, but if they choose to view photos, data fees will apply. 0.facebook.com launched last month across over 50 mobile operator networks in 45 countries--deals are also in the pipeline with carriers including the U.K.'s 3, Australia's Telstra and France's SFR.

Despite Facebook's mobile supremacy--and regardless of the failure of the Quit Facebook Day effort--it's obvious CEO Mark Zuckerberg is feeling real pressure over the ongoing privacy flap. A week after Facebook introduced new, simplified controls promising to help users better understand what kind of information they're choosing to share online, Zuckerberg appeared Wednesday at the D8 conference--The New York Times reports he was defensive and visibly uncomfortable while answering questions about the upgraded policies, even shedding his trademark black hoodie in an attempt to cool off (prompting comparisons to Richard Nixon and his flopsweat meltdown while debating John F. Kennedy in 1960). "There have been misperceptions that we are trying to make all information open," Zuckerberg said at one point. "That's completely false." But for the most part he rambled, frequently sidestepping direct questions about what exactly Facebook is trying to do instead. It's tough to calculate the damage, although Facebook has weathered controversies before and still continued to grow. For now it remains too powerful, too entrenched--and for most users, too addictive--to simply fade away. But for the first time, Facebook looks a bit vulnerable, too. -Jason