A recent poll found that an estimated 60 percent of users are considering quitting Facebook over privacy issues. More than 11,000 people have committed to ditching the social-networking site on May 31, according to QuitFacebookDay.com. Yesterday, Facebook rolled out what appears to be a reversal of policy, as the company caved to intense public pressure to clamp down on their privacy policies. Since December, Facebook began a new set of subtle policy changes designed to share more user’s information with a wider variety of partner companies and the web in general.

Why? Well… depends who you ask. If you ask Mark Zuckerman (the 26 year-old billionaire founder of Facebook) he says the notions of privacy are evolving and that the company changed its policies to reflect that. He cited the rise of blogging as his evidence of that change. Zuckerman also claims the company has said for some time that more public information will lead to greater familiarity, understanding and empathy between people: that a change towards a public Facebook is good for world peace.

Good one Mark, world peace.

A more realistic reason for why Facebook is pursuing an open-book privacy policy is because the company may be preparing for an IPO and is doing everything it can to increase profitability. Without a doubt, Facebook’s most incredible asset is the sheer quantity of in-depth consumer insight it holds. Marketers and companies looking to improve sales and ROI on their websites can essentially purchase access to personal preferences so that when a Facebook user visits a partner site, they can provide a more customizable experience designed to make you more likely to buy something or re-visit.

Has Facebook done anything criminal here? No. They’re just trying to make the Internet a more informed marketplace (while making a buck). But this whole debate raises a much more salient point… the importance of trust in the social web.

In March, Facebook surpassed Google as the most highly visited website in the US, thus proving that search is far from the only reason why people use the web. What people are learning is that the Internet is an incredible tool to connect in meaningful ways with others for whom geography, time or just the complexities of life limit interaction otherwise.

Facebook is to Generation Y as the diary was to your mother… but just because Facebook has provided the pages of this modern diary, doesn’t mean they have the right to sell them to eBay. Privacy isn't just about keeping things secret, it's about respecting the context of communication and not pushing peoples' communication out of the context it was intended for. I know this well as a PR practitioner, commandeering the original context of a message and bending it meet your needs is a recipe for disaster...

In Facebook’s case, people might want to share their experiences, but they also might not. I think that as the nature of sharing and the benefits of doing so become better understood, the likelihood that people will opt-in is likely to dramatically increase. However, Facebook’s mistake was to take the element of control away from their users by essentially forcing them into accepting a future with shared personal content. By backing off this idea, Facebook is finally acknowledging that they aren’t in control of their platform as much as they thought they were; that Facebook is truly owned by the people who congregate there, and if they don’t respect that, the platform will die as quickly as it rose.