Recent controversy and complaints over at Facebook sound a lot like the pre-reformed Linden Labs and their community relations with Second Life users. I use the term reformed advisedly – I still think Linden has a long way to go to create truly collaborative systems for information, receiving feedback from, and implementing user suggestions. The JIRA as a management tool is a mess, for example, as are the group functions within SL, and the sense that it’s hard to feel the true presence of SL support.

Having said that, Facebook might want to give the Lindens a call for some tips. Recently launching an application called Beacon which allowed partner sites to send tracking data back to Facebook was mismanaged both as a technology and through its communication to users and partners.

As reported in IT Business:

Facebook could have avoided the strident, weeks-long controversy engulfing its Beacon ad system if, when designing and deploying it, the social-networking company had followed basic social etiquette principles, such as being considerate and candid.

If THAT doesn’t sound like a common complaint from residents of SL, at least pre-September, then I don’t know what does. Similarly, Facebook’s response, which was basically to blame the users, sounded a similar note to previous replies from the Lindens that lag was often a “user problem” (rather than their current approach which is to be transparent that it’s an issue, try to fix it with HAVOK and other technologies, and to provide user-friendly lag reduction tips and changes to the viewer.

Facebook’s response to Berteau’s research has been a brief statement in which it confirms the findings, but says that in the case of logged-off users, deactivated accounts and nonmembers, Facebook deletes the data upon receiving it.

Yesterday Linden. Tomorrow Facebook – and by the way, does anyone find the Facebook APIs a lot like rotating banners on the mainland?