I remember when all my friends joined Facebook - it happened between high school and university. A couple of them had MySpace during high school but everybody had Facebook by the end of the first year of university. Back then I distinctly remember some friends motivating their getting Facebook when they didn't have Myspace by explaining how Facebook only let your friends and university peers see your profile - as per the excellent parent comment.

I recently explained to these same non-tech folks that applications they have installed can see and now store all their data. They didn't realise this and I don't think they really believed me - perceptions, once formed, take a lot to change! And when only the tech media really discusses API access etc. it's not surprising that most people have not registered the change in how Facebook treats their data.

I quote a non-tech business major friend who was in the above conversation: "It's unintentional bait and switch man - he got everyone signed up by making things better than the other sites and then his investors realised how much money they could make, changed the way data is handled and all the clueless users won't realise it until its too late and Facebook runs the internet!"