Hello all,
Am signing in from hols with a slightly dodgy French connection so please excuse typos etc. I'm sorry for the lack of response - Helen has been doing a sterling job but threads like this can be quite scary and I thought I should try to address some of the questions that have been raised.
So. first, why have a like this thread thing at all?
Mumsnet is and always has been an open, public forum. We feel strongly that we want to attract new users and always have. That's why we do all the press stuff, and tweet and facebook and write books and all the rest of it. We want to advertise the site, broadly for three reasons:
- We think MN is v useful and the more folks who can benefit from its (your) wisdom, the better.
- We want to grow our audience because it means we can sell more ads and thus hire more people to do the things we already do better and to do more things - apps, bloggers networks etc
- We believe that attracting new users is important because it stops the forums getting too cliquey and stale. (That's not to say we don't value old users, we do, we just think that being open to newbies is on balance a very good thing).
And allowing users to easily share MN discussions on the biggest social networking site is a bit of a no brainer, if you want to advertise yourself.
Why are we playing fast and loose with your privacy?
We are not. Mumsnet, as some have said, is not private - it's anything but - I imagine we are, per user, the most quoted from site on the web in this country and one of the most linked to on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
Mumsnet, as many have also rightly pointed out, is different from those networks, though, because we allow and encourage anonymity via nicknames and name changing. This button will not compromise that - you do not have to click on it and tell your friends that you are on Mumsnet.
Yes someone else could link to a thread that you have posted on but it's really no different to what goes on all the time anyway - you still have your anonymity in the same way that you currently do - if you are worried that you could be identified from your posts by someone outside your own facebook circle who might happen to know you from them, then that's is already an issue, I'm afraid.
Facebook is horrible/tacky/creepy - Mn is above all that, why would we associate with them?
This is no more an association than pretty much everyone on the web, including ourselves at the top of each page and on the drop down bar on every thread (unless you've disabled it) already has. It's quite simply a recognition that Facebook is the most widely used space on the internet in the world. Some people have gone so far as to say that Facebook is the internet. Will the rehousing of this button at the top of threads mean anything with regard to what Facebook know about you, how they might target you etc? No.
Why on earth would anyone click a like this thread button anyway?
Well, for the same reason people share things with their friends all the time. Because they come across something interesting, or funny or infuriating or whatever. But plenty of people don't want to connect their FB identity with their MN one for good reasons, as evidenced by this thread, and they absolutely don't have to. Nothing has changed.
What if I accidentally click on the like button and reveal my mumsnet habit to my facebook friends?
That is a very legitimate concern and we will absolutely make sure the two step process works, if it isn't already doing so, to make sure that it would be very difficult and we will bear in mind in future design for other platforms (eg ipad editions).
However, hopefully it will reassure you to know that when we first introduced Facebook and Twitter share buttons on posts (which were removed and put up top in a redesign a while back) users voiced very similar concerns. Post introducing it, those fears have thankfully not proved to be justified. There has been no incidence of unforeseen outings etc. We have the odd person who wants their posts deleted as they have been discovered by a real life acquaintance but as far as I recall it's always been because someone has put two and two together on Mumsnet itself not on Facebook.
We haven't put the like button on certain topics not because we think it compromises folks' identity but because some conversations are simply not appropriate for sharing with a wider audience - eg bereavement - but I don't believe this is true of the site in general. I think there's nothing wrong with sharing the everyday wit, wisdom and even downright barminess of MN with others.
I really hope this allays some concerns. As Helen has said, we really weren't trying to pull a fast one on you - we just really didn't anticipate this level of antipathy (although it would be disingenuous to pretend that we didn't anticipate any at all). I will pop back in over the next couple of days but won't be around all the time or I'll be in trouble with dh and kids, so apologies in advance for that.