Josh Levy, a longtime advocate of the power of social media, is having a crisis of faith.
Last week, Levy created a site seeking 10,000 people to pledge to quit Facebook with him to protest the social network's most recent privacy changes.
Only 100 people have pledged so far. For individuals like Levy - who has worked with several social media startups and commented extensively on Web topics - it's not easy letting go. But someone, he said, has to send a message.
Levy represents a small but growing undercurrent of dissatisfaction over Facebook's march toward turning the Internet into one giant social network, a plan that relies on its members publicly sharing what they read, think, eat, watch, listen to, like and dislike.
"What Facebook is doing is not acceptable, and its attitude is too cavalier," Levy said. "I don't want to go back to the horse and buggy days. But I want modernity to be fair."
Analysts say the undercurrent is not yet strong enough to impact the Palo Alto social-networking king, which has more than 400 million active members.
In fact, Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said the site has added 10 million members since April 21, when the company touched off the latest round of privacy concerns at its developer conference in San Francisco.
But anti-Facebook sentiment is surfacing in highly visible places, from the halls of Congress to the blogs and podcasts of influential technology experts like Leo Laporte of Petaluma.
"It seems to me that ultimately their goal is to funnel all Internet traffic through Facebook.com," said Laporte, who deleted his Facebook profile during a recent podcast and donated money to Diaspora, a project to create a more open and private alternative to Facebook.
Ended his account
Laporte was inspired to put an end to his Facebook account by a recent blog post by Jason Calacanis, chief executive officer of Mahalo, a question-and-answer Web site. He accused Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg of trading users' privacy for profit.
"Facebook is officially 'out,' as in uncool, amongst partners, parents and pundits all coming to the realization that Zuckerberg and his company are - simply put - not trustworthy," Calacanis wrote on his personal Web site.
Facebook convened a staff meeting Thursday to discuss the backlash, although some staff members described it as a routine gathering.
"We have an open culture, and it should come as no surprise that we're providing a forum for employees to ask questions on a topic that has received a lot of outside interest," Noyes said.
Since its inception in 2004, Facebook has evolved from a collection of private networks of college friends to an Internet juggernaut with more than 400 million users.
But privacy advocates criticize the company for exposing its customers - via public information posted on their Facebook profiles - to unwanted risks, from identity theft to workplace embarrassment.
Earlier this month, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and 14 other privacy and consumer organizations filed a complaint against Facebook with the Federal Trade Commission, accusing the popular social network of "unfair and deceptive trade practices" and violating users' expectations of privacy and consumer protection laws.
And last month, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., asked the FTC to develop guidelines instructing social networks on how private information can be used.
All of this comes in the wake of the company's launch of a new "open" social platform designed to bring Facebook features, such as its Like button, to other Web sites, and an experimental Instant Personalization feature that gives certain Web sites the ability to access a member's name, profile picture, sex and network of friends. The company also launched community pages that made topics in a member's profile more public.
Facebook defends changes
In interviews, Facebook officials have repeatedly said the majority of their members are benefiting from the innovations, which are meant to cater to the evolving sharing habits of the community. Indeed, Web sites that have partnered with Facebook, like CNN, have reported increases in traffic.
But critics say the process of hiding personal information is overly cumbersome. And minor security breaches in Facebook's chat program have only added to the criticism.
Still, social media analysts say Facebook remains far from reaching the tipping point where it would start to lose members, especially with no comparable alternative for consumers. But the company does have a brewing public relations problem that could get worse if doesn't act.
"Are people really going to leave Facebook and go back to e-mail as a primary source of sharing online? I don't think so," said Augie Ray, a senior analyst for Forrester Research Inc., a technology research firm. "Facebook will not suffer irreparable harm from continuing to offer Instant Personalization, but they will make their job of earning consumer trust more difficult."
Explain the social benefits
Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst with San Mateo consulting firm Altimeter Group, said Facebook needs to take steps to better explain the benefits of an open social Web. And that's compounded by Facebook constantly revising its privacy policy.
"It seems like they didn't think things through," Owyang said. "They keep on doing it and pushing customers along whether they like it or not. They're going too fast, and consumers aren't educated about what's private and what's public."
The changes have already pushed several angry users to kill their accounts. On Twitter, hundreds of tweets proudly announced the deactivation - in some cases, the more drastic permanent deletion - of their Facebook profiles.
A user called JCollinsLambert tweeted: "I deactivated my #facebook account last week; will delete soon unless privacy policies change drastically."
I spent several hours last night trying to book a flight to/fro Santa
