What backlash? Facebook is growing like mad

My first reaction? Creepy! My second reaction: Cool!

    That's pretty typical for most new communication tools. When I was in high school and my family first got caller ID, it felt like a huge invasion of privacy. Now I don't pick up the phone unless I recognize who is calling.

    This is not the first time Facebook has endeavored to give users a new way to do things online. When Zuckerberg introduced the news feed in September 2006, a small-but-vocal group of people freaked out. Zuckerberg responded with an open letter to users that began, "We really messed this one up." It was a huge risk to the company, but over time users embraced the feature. Now the idea of aggregating social behaviors in a stream like the news feed has become the new way in which social information is organized and digested.

    It's representative of Facebook's approach to introducing most new features: let it loose, listen to users, and dial it back while they get used to it. Better to apologize later than to ask permission beforehand. For innovators, this can be a smart strategy. It was Henry Ford who said that if he'd asked his customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.

    The company understands the gravity of the behavioral shifts that are happening atop its platform as it user base mushrooms to more than 400 million members. Facebook has had an office in Washington D.C. for nearly a year, and in the past six months it has staffed up and become more proactive in discussing how information is shared on the web. (It has not brought former FTC chairman Tim Muris on staff, as some outlets reported earlier in the week, however.) Company executives are blogging regularly about the decisions they're making. And engineers tweak the designs and features constantly to better reflect user and advertisers needs.

    Ultimately, Facebook's success has more to do with how well it listens and responds to users, and not a lot to do with whether it lets them keep data private. If users embrace the changes, Facebook will flourish. If not, as with the failed advertising product Beacon, the company will need to adjust its strategy. So far, this is working. While tech pundits Laporte and Rojas may have killed their Facebook profiles, most people haven't.