Like many of you, today I learned about the change in Facebook’s Terms of Service which essentially gave FB the right to “use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute” something that a user has posted, forever. My first exposure to this change was from The Next Web, and during the day an article appeared comparing TOS from FB, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn and others. The story also got picked up by CNET and the New York Times.

Thinking I could try to contribute to the solution, I even started a Facebook group protesting the policy. Ha! Guess I’m not as popular as the much larger group here.

Anyway, by 5:00 this afternoon, Mashable was reporting on Zuckerberg’s response via a post to the Facebook blog.

I don’t want to predict how this will shake out in the end. There are people much more attuned to those issues than me.

What is compelling to me is the way this might effect the Facebook brand. As Gavin adeptly points out in his cautionary post from this afternoon:

This change in the Facebook Terms of Service is a significant about face in the way in which Facebook treats its members. It may be too late for the content that I ALREADY have on my profile, but I will clearly be more SELECTIVE about the content I upload in the future. Because I won’t just be uploading, I will be GIVING it away.

Think about it. “A significant about face in the way in which Facebook treats its members.”

Would there be an uproar if Disney decided to welcome “customers” instead of “guests”? How about if Nordstrom decided to stop offering its signature service and instead adopted the technique of Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi?

The core values of a company cannot and should not be sacrificed for fear of eroding the foundational promise on which the whole of the brand rests.

No question, Facebook is the 800-pound gorilla of social media these days. After all, business is business. FB has to protect itself and keep its interests first. But, one would hope with that importance comes responsibility.

In that same post, Gavin warns bloggers and agencies to approach FB knowing that your content will no longer be your content. Sage advice. And, if I’m in the boardroom at FB, this advice should make me feel a hole burning in my lower intestines.

One of the very reasons my company exists — to generate traffic by connecting people with shared interests — might now be threatened by the content creators second-guessing my integrity. Thing is, content creators aren’t just agencies and bloggers. If you upload your vacation photos to FB, the new TOS say FB can do what they want with them.

That they can use my fish-belly-white chest photographed on the Michigan shore in future ads without my permission is where their trust (not to mention their level of taste) disappears.

The minute you start taking for granted the trust of your customers (the very population on which your business plan and funding rests) someone else is going to capitalize and fill that void.

I hope Shakespeare will forgive my paraphrase, but the question now seems to be, “To share or not to share? To connect or not to connect?”

Perhaps this will all blow over. Maybe FB will reverse its stance (not without losing some ground). Heck, maybe there’s not a large enough percentage of the 175 million users out there who care. Maybe I’m just shouting into the wind.

What if I’m not? Will you continue to post to Facebook? If you blog, will you use FB as a way to connect to your audience?

Will you share?

(Image via Creative Commons: http://flickr.com/photos/wooandy)