Facebook Avoids Face-Off

By Mike Schuster Apr 22, 2009 12:15 pm

But did site intentionally sabotage user poll?

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Facebook's attempt to organize users to vote on the social network's Terms of Service (TOS) has failed miserably - though perhaps that's from a notable want of trying.

For a company that's enabled millions to practice the fine art of self-promotion, the lack of any real advertising for the campaign was more than a little striking.

In February, the online community erupted after Facebook quietly updated its TOS and included some suspiciously loose wording. Left open to interpretation, one paragraph implied that Facebook has the legal right to own every piece of user content uploaded to the site in perpetuity - even if the user's account is canceled.

The story made headlines, and Facebook's members were up in arms. The situation intensified after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a condescending attempt at damage control. In the end, however, the company relented, removed the offending paragraph, and reverted to thee original wording.

Along with Yahoo (YHOO) and Wikipedia, Facebook promised to establish a "user council" - a kind of community advocacy group to address user concerns and take suggestions - as well as to protect them from content misappropriation and adjudge any change to the TOS.

Users were only too happy to make suggestions, and, over the past month, Facebook has implemented them in 2 democratic-sounding documents called "Facebook Principles" and "The Statement of Rights and Responsibilities."

On April 16, the company launched a section of the site where members can vote on whether they want the new TOS or keep the old ones. In order for the vote to count, 30% of the site's active members -- roughly 60 to 70 million users -- need to stand up and be counted.

The only problem: Facebook has done little to advertise this poll, which ends tomorrow night. Only a handful of users have seen the banner ad promoting the poll on their accounts. The vast majority never knew it existed.

As it stands, a little more than 320,000 people have voted - leaving the social network free to make their own decision on the matter.

Requiring 60 to 70 million members to participate in a week's time, Facebook set a high bar that it almost certainly couldn't meet.

The question now: Was that its intention all along?Twitter: @mcs212