Facebook Plus

Don’t call me a Luddite, but I still prefer meeting people one-​to-​one over any other form of interaction. Yet I can proudly say I have almost mastered the telephone, even its cellular incarnation.

Alas, my computer is almost a constant vexation — and I almost never use Skype. I even let my personal domain-​name blog vanish from the Web.

So I tread into the eddies of modern innovative turbulence with more than a little trepidation.

I feel up-​to-​date enough by just being on Facebook.

This hasn’t stopped me from commenting on services like Facebook in the past, but, like any person who strays from his core competencies (yes, I’m on LinkedIn, too — did you detect the business lingo?), I often look to more with-​it folks to spark some thoughts and keep track of many trends. (Don’t we all?)

On Reason’s Hit and Run, Katherine Mangu-​Ward keenly observes that last year all sorts of people got really worked up about Facebook’s weird privacy-​diminishing policies. There was hysteria in some quarters, talk of monopolies and even natural monopolies, or (in other words), treating Facebook as a “public utility.” You know, regulating it “in the public interest.”

So what happened?

Google launched Google+, which has a number of cool privacy features.

The result?

“Starting tomorrow,” Mangu-​Ward writes, “Facebook will debut new, easier to use privacy settings with ‘a googley aftertaste’”…

Competition. It still works its wonders.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.