“Public” should not be the default
blog.twitalbums.com
blog.twitalbums.com
The second is specifically their album privacy settings, which are not a million miles away in complexity from twitalbum's own and include the very useful "except for" feature.
It looks like the author is trying to hitch a ride on popular discomfort with default-publicity to advertise their service, even though it's not substantially different.
I'm not Facebook's biggest fan or anything, but this just looks like a naked grab for publicity.
Is our believe that is easier for a user to choose which users get to see something rather that to choose from say 500 friends which ones do not.
More than publicity, we are trying to start a discussion. It helps us create a better service based on valid arguments.
Actually I think you are referring specifically to:
"Let members invite others to the Album"
There are two reasons for this:
1. We make it VERY easy to be private. If you wish to have control over each user that has access to your album, just un-check that and you are done.
2. We believe we are private by default because if you create an album and I'm not invited by you or one of your friends (that you previously invited) I can't see the album. That is different than being able to see your media for the simple fact that if I'm friends with one of your friends without being invited.
My personal view is that if you put something on the internet, it's not private. My Facebook account and everything I put in it are public - I find it's easier for me to answer the question "Do I want the whole world to know this?" versus understanding the complicated network-visibility rules in Facebook. In other words, I don't fault Facebook or Twitpic for defaulting to public options. But don't claim that you default to private do when you clearly do not.
That being said, I don't know if there is anything wrong with that. It's the changing of a user's settings midstream that's shady.
I was thinking about a service that lets you add notes to books last night. My first thought was that every note had to default to public. Why? So you would contribute to the greater community without having to think about it. If you truly wanted to keep a secret, it would be an option.
BUT, this service is very far off from what Facebook let's you upload and share. Though, the point is the same, they're being selfish at individual user's expense.