How often do you visit your ‘About’ section on Facebook? If you’re like most people, the answer is likely not very often. Most of us filled out that information when we signed up for Facebook then quickly forgot about it.
Your email address as it appears after the Facebook change.
Last year Facebook launched a branded email program where they encouraged users to sign-up for their own exclusive email account with the @facebook.com address. Of course, many people already have more than enough email accounts which they are stressed to manage so this Facebook.com initiative did not catch on like wildfire needless to say.
Well, fear not, dear Facebook user because Facebook took it upon themselves this week to *change* your email address within the aforementioned ‘About’ section to yournamehere@facebook.com. How’s that for having cajones? Facebook did NOT notify anyone of this impending change nor did they feel it was an invasion of your privacy and information to edit information that YOU input.
To change it back, click on the ‘edit’ button and change the default on your Facebook-assigned email to “Hidden from Timeline” and then change the default on the address you specified to “Shown on Timeline”. Remember to click ‘Save Changes’ on the bottom right-hand of that dialogue box.
Changing it back is easy enough, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this causes more people to distance themselves from Facebook. It is these seemingly small breaches of privacy that cause people to rethink just how and where we share information with each other through a third-party. Again, we at SPARKER Strategy Group cannot stress enough that placing all your marketing eggs in Facebook’s basket is a BAD IDEA. We wrote about this topic earlier this year, and today’s email imposition should serve as a reminder that Facebook should not be more than a destination to your brand. Get social, of course, but on your terms with your customers.