my nation has 900,000,000 citizens and, as near as i can tell, they can all fit in my laptop.  my nation has its own form of money, a movie about its beginnings* and a handsome prince and princess.

prince mark zuckerberg and bride priscilla chan honeymooned in italy just after the much anticipated facebook i.p.o. insta-millionaires were gravely disappointed as the share price opened at $42 and has plunged to $27. but every great nation has initial problems.

this past month, facebook held an election on proposed privacy amendments.  i don’t know about you, but i figure i have no privacy on facebook. but some students in ireland disagree with that notion and filed a complaint with the irish data protection commission which is in charge of regulating facebook in europe.  the students claimed “hey, that picture of me drunk on the couch that my ex-girlfriend posted and then i made her take it down, that’s my privacy we’re talking about!”

on may 23, 2005 tom cruise declared his love for katie holmes as he trampolined on a couch on the oprah show. i’m sure HE’D like to say he owns that and then he would burn it. tom is known for being very reserved, secretive, almost like a scientologist. oh, right, he IS a scientologist.

so facebook held a vote on amendments to its privacy policies.  the amendments allow for what items are automatically public on facebook, what items facebook owns (anything you post) and what happens when you deactivate your account (facebook keeps all of it in perpetuity).  the data is important because it allows for facebook to target advertising.  and get revenue.  which might help that stock price slide. i’ve seen a lot of posts complaining about privacy and facebook policies.  if i had known about a chance to vote on this, i would have.

three hundred and fifty thousand people voted, just four percent, and overwhelmingly they were opposed to the privacy amendments. the company had said that it would consider the vote binding if more than 30% of its users voted.

*the social network chronicled the brave prince mark battling to free people everywhere so that they can connect.  and actually, i believe that is exactly what mark zuckerberg actually intends.  as he has been quoted as saying, “we don’t build services to make money–we make money so we can build better services!”