However, Facebook has stated in unequivocal terms that the social network did not experience a privacy bug in conjunction with Timeline's recent global rollout. Those deeply cringe-worthy, often embarrassing, and occasionally intimate posts that users were alarmed to discover "were older wall posts that had always been visible on the users’ profile pages," the company insisted, and not private messages from your Facebook inbox, suddenly exposed.

On her Facebook page, Charlotte Carnevale Willner, a safety team lead of user operations at Facebook, reminded users of a time (pre-2009) when likes and comments were not part of your wall posts. "Back then, News Feed didn't really pick up person-to-person wallposts," she wrote. "The wall didn't feel as public then as it does now, and the messages product was still... well... crappy."

But let's go back to the horse's mouth. Today's scandal-that-wasn't first originated in Metro France, spreading to Italian publications like la Repubblica, with tech blogs like TechCrunch quickly picking up the story, and The Next Web and yours truly following the thread. (Facebook pointed out that France was the most recent country where its Timeline feature was rolled out. The company announced worldwide rollouts of timeline "over the next few weeks" back in December, but AllFacebook notes that the company has been unusually slow in updating profiles.)

By later this afternoon, tech blogs that initially reported on the issue had all walked back their earlier concern after Facebook offered more detail. Betabeat changed our initial headline--as well as the initial dek: "Welcome to your worst nightmare." (Who, us? Paranoid?!) As an outside Facebook developer, who works closely with the company’s API, told Betabeat, “It’s obviously possible they fucked up. Just seems unlikely that they fucked up so badly.”

TechCrunch reporter Colleen Taylor, who helped legitimate users' concerns, has since deleted her deeply skeptical response to Facebook's initial, less insistent statements. "This doesn’t seem to be quite satisfactory to me, since I personally continue to see what were direct messages on both my own and my friends’ Timelines," she wrote of Facebook's first comments on the matter, implying that posts from Mark Zuckerberg and Dave Morin on her wall were likely personal messages. That is gone from the article and Ms. Taylor's now confidently states, "But worry not, and make sure your friends know the truth. No private Facebook messages have leaked."

The Next Web doesn't seem to be quite as certain. Even after including Facebook's more involved explanation, the blog notes, "Despite this, we’re still getting more and more reports from readers insisting their private messages sent to and from friends are appearing on their Timelines." Gizmodo told folks to move along, no privacy scandal to see here, but commenters weren't so sure.

Not that that proves anything. Hysteria tends to be contagious. Mix in a little short-term memory loss--would I really have negged a coworker in public? was my Timeline always this chock-a-block with ghosts of social media shames past?--and you have a vague cloud of uncertainty lingering over the whole affair. Betabeat asked Facebook whether any new content at all appeared on American users' Timelines today and why there has been no further update on the Facebook blog about the global Timeline rollout since it was promised in December, but received the same canned statement from the company as we had earlier.

Perhaps the more telling question, however, is what does it say about perceptions of Facebook that so many quickly believed this was possible? For anyone burned by Friendster's abrupt decision in 2005--to let anyone see the last 100 people who viewed their profile--the neural pathways for this kind of privacy outrage are already there.

But Facebook's well-documented callousness towards' users privacy concerns certainly puts some pressure on the trigger finger. Friendster and others set the pattern for surprise changes to your privacy settings and Facebook hasn't given users must reason to have faith. Zuck's rallying cry to his troops, after all, is "Move fast and break things." Just this past Friday, Gizmodo stuck the headline "Facebook Is Now Recording Everyone You Stalk” on a post about a new feature (visibile only to the user herself for now) that shows you what–-and more to the point whom–-you’ve looked up.

It's been well established that corporations are not your friends. But couple the staggering amounts of data we've voluntarily handed over to Facebook with the public company's mandate to show a profit to their shareholders--morally upright founder letters be damned--and their increasing willingness to try a make a buck off of it, and we wouldn't be surprised to see a move worth getting up in arms about in the future.

Maybe it's less about what the company has done and more about what you believe it's capable of. "I'd been planning to shut down my FB for a while. This just sealed the deal," Betabeat's Steve Huff told me. "I suddenly understood just how little trust I have for them."

Check out our dissection of the privacy scare: Anatomy of the Facebook Hysteria: Remember the Aughts? You Will Now

Facebook users in the U.S. and European Union have begun reporting old private messages visible on their timelines. According to TechCrunch and multiple French and Italian publications, the newest messages are three years old and tagged as having been "Posted by friends." TechCrunch reports the first tips about the bug coming from readers, while MetroFrance asks if it is a "bug or security breach?"

The French news site reported that where the flaw occurs messages are clearly past private communications and they are often mixed up with 'comments from friends on [your] wall.'

Betabeat has also had multiple old messages pop up on our timelines, prompting unpleasant walks down Memory Lane. 

UPDATE: In a statement emailed to Betabeat, a Facebook spokesperson said, "A small number of users raised concerns after what they mistakenly believed to be private messages appeared on their Timeline. Our engineers investigated these reports and found that the messages were older wall posts that had always been visible on the users' profile pages. Facebook is satisfied that there has been no breach of user privacy."

However, at least two New York Observer reporters are seeing items labeled as "posted by friends" (in some cases sensitive, work-related communication) that they believe to be have private messages. It's hard to say with 100 percent certainty because the posts were from 2008. In this screengrab of what is now a post below, you can see the person who wrote it refers to their Facebook page, implying that this was a private message. The items that they believe to have been messages--now posted on Timeline--are no longer located in the original thread. TechCrunch also reports that direct messages, not older wall posts, are now showing up on their Timeline.

Reuters' Anthony DeRosa tweeted with the same complaint.

Wow, I just had to hide private messages from several years on Facebook, I can confirm that this is an issue, for my account at least.

— Anthony De Rosa (@AntDeRosa) September 24, 2012

The reports--and Facebook's denial--has inspired a good deal of frantic brain-ransacking among the tech press. What was the difference between how we wrote PMs and wall posts back in 2005? Before Newsfeed, most of us assumed wall posts were basically the digital equivalent of pinning a note on a friend's dorm room door--not totally private, but not like taking out a billboard on the campus green, either. Now even those of us without PMs showing up are looking at what we wrote under those assumptions and groaning in sheer mortification.

If there's confusion of just what the hell Facebook is publishing, it may point to a larger problem with the social network, which is that it wants to be around and leveraging your data for years into the future--and yet it keeps shifting what we can expect from the way it treats our posts and personal information.

UPDATE 2: In an extended denial published by TechCrunch, Facebook expanded their explanation of how they checked out the rumors of private messages being revealed on public timelines:

Every report we’ve seen, we’ve gone back and checked. We haven’t seen one report that’s been confirmed [of a private message being exposed]. A lot of the confusion is because before 2009 there were no likes and no comments on wall posts. People went back and forth with wall posts instead of having a conversation [in the comments of single wall post.]

UPDATE 3: Whether they're private messages or old embarrassing wall posts, you can easily hide them:

1. On the right sidebar, click on the year you want to hide posts from. We hid everything from pre-2009.
2. In the box that aggregates all your wall posts and says "X number of people have written on your wall," there's an "edit or remove" option. Click it.
3. Click "Hide from Timeline" and all wall posts from that year will be hidden from your timeline.

UPDATE 4: Facebook also told TechCrunch's Josh Constine that technical barriers prevent private messages from appearing as wall posts. Mr. Constine was told that "The two systems are totally separate."

UPDATE 5: We consulted with an outside developer for Facebook, who works closely with the social network's API. "I think it boils down to possibly three options," he said. "1) facebook royally fucked up and some private messages were imported into the wall system. 2) facebook did not fuck up at all and some people are more public than they thought, 4-6 years ago 3) facebook fucked up a little bit - maybe in some cases - but people are going crazy over shit they said 4-6 years ago."

The developer said that he checked his private messages from around the years allegedly impacted--2007-2009--and "couldn't find any of those messages" in his inbox. This "isn't evidence either way, but if they are separate systems [as Facebook told Techcrunch], one would think they would still exist in the private message system."

"It's obviously possible they fucked up," he said. "Just seems unlikely that they fucked up so badly." Though, "anything is possible code wise," he added.

Buddy Media's CEO, Michael Lazerow (flickr.com/leweb3)

In the social marketing space, if you want to be successful, you have to become one of Facebook's Preferred Developers. Without this corporate badge of honor, your company won't have access to various Facebook insider perks, like tips on new features and API changes, and direct access to Facebook employees and training.

The PDC program has always been viewed as an olive branch extended to big companies--it's essentially Facebook's way of saying they value brands on the platform, so much so that they provide a list of "preferred" companies that can help optimize your brand's Facebook presence.

But with the advent of Facebook's new layout, Timeline, the company's devotion to brands has grown increasingly murkier and rendered some of the most traditional offerings of social marketing companies--like scheduling posts and developing custom landing tabs--far less necessary.

Earlier this month, ReadWriteWeb noted that brands that had switched to the timeline layout saw a decrease in engagement--but only, interestingly, if they scheduled their posts. Posts that were published manually did not see a loss of engagement.

This would seem an affront by Facebook to social marketing companies, who proudly advertise the ability to schedule posts as an important aspect of their tools. (As a previous employee of a social marketing company that was a competitor to Buddy Media's, this reporter knows this firsthand.)

Robyn Tippins, ReadWriteWeb's community manager, weighed in in the comments. "I have no idea what Facebook is doing, but they are driving me crazy," she wrote. " It almost seems like they want us to tear our hair out over trying to do it ourselves and then give up and pay Facebook for advertising...  ;)."

It seems like that's exactly what Facebook is trying to do. Another commenter clarified. "Either you pay or you get less impressions. It was very clear from the FMC [Facebook Marketing Conference] event that this is how they are going to play it moving forward. Gotta love it, the new Facebook advertising is basically mob protection."

Joe Ciarallo, Buddy Media's VP of communications, didn't agree that the conference attempted to sway companies to use advertising instead of brand pages.

"When Facebook has FMC, and Sheryl Sandberg says 'Your page is your mission control center, everything starts from the page,' it's clear that you have to focus on content, and that’s what we’ve been preaching forever," he told Betabeat via phone. "That was the biggest message that I got: that you have to start thinking about the content that’s going to get my fans and friends of fans sharing, and of course I can amplify that via premium ads."

Buddy Media acquired Brighter Option back in February, an acquisition that allowed them to add paid advertising solutions to their social marketing offerings. And before being acquired by Adobe, this reporter's former company was acquired by Efficient Frontier, a company that also offers multi-channel advertising technology.

Another post on ReadWriteWeb echoes Facebook's preference for ads over pages: in an amendment added to Facebook's IPO prospectus, "Facebook said 'decisions by advertisers to use our free products, such as Facebook Pages, instead of advertising on Facebook' would negatively impact its ad revenue growth."

Though many social marketing companies offer ads in addition to brand page solutions, the historical focus has always been on creating good content for brand pages, and letting the ads follow. This amendment makes it clear that, at least from a business perspective, Facebook would prefer brands to opt for Facebook Premium Ads rather than free brand pages.

Perhaps because of Facebook's recent focus on ads, many social marketing companies are looking to diversify venues. At the beginning of April, Buddy Media announced a new YouTube channel sponsorship ad model. YouTube's increasing popularity and hospitality to marketers has recently drummed up interest in advertising on the site (thismoment and WildFire also both offer YouTube solutions).

Mr. Ciarallo insists that Buddy has always focused on offering cross-platform solutions. "We started as a [Facebook] PDC," he said. "We had partnerships with LinkedIn, then we integrated Twitter, we had the ad buying. This market moves fast so you have to keep evolving to really set the pace. For us it’s just setting the pace for what we need to do."

But there's no doubt that social marketing companies have been scrambling to snap up advertising options, as most companies are built on the idea of 'customizing' and 'optimizing' your brand page, and until recently did little in terms of running ads.

"I think that’s what Facebook is focused on," said Mr. Ciarallo. "This sort of convergence--stop thinking about your ad team and your community management team writing wall post copy. Ideally, you want that wall post copy to be amplified via sponsored or via premium products."

It seems even the social marketing companies have already begun to internalize Facebook's new line of thinking. Facebook's message to social marketers? Figure out a way to offer advertising solutions to complement your brand page content, or find a different platform. Hey, we're sure Google+ is dying for marketing partners (Buddy Media is already one of them).

Facebook held its much-anticipated fMC event (Facebook Marketing Conference or "for more cash," depending on your perspective) at the Museum of Natural History in New York today. And its not that far from what we told you back in December when Betabeat leaked details of Facebook's plan to sell your timeline to advertisers.

COO Sheryl Sandberg started out talking about Facebook's role in the Arab Spring, before moving onto Facebook's ability to change the public's relationship with politicians and celebrities,  then finally got to the big reveal: Facebook Premium. The old online ad model is fixated on companies  “talking at their customers,” whereas, “They want to be a full part of the conversation.”

“It enables brands to find their voices… and to have genuine, personal relationships with their customers,” said Ms. Sandberg. Facebook, helping you built lasting, intimate bonds  . . . with organizations that want to sell you shit.

"Essentially, Facebook has decided to turn its social network into a massive marketing platform," Courtney Boyd Meyers writes on The Next Web. Here's how they're planning on doing it:

• Businesses now have pages with Timelines.
• Brand "stories" will now be featured on your Newsfeed.
• Facebook launched a product called a "Reach Generator" which promises brands that their content will reach fans once a month.
• Facebook's logout page will also now feature ads. "That’s right," writes Ms. Boyd Meyers. "On your way out the door, Facebook will be pushing ads and offers to you too. "

As TechCrunch reports:

"Facebook’s goal was likely to make Pages more about storytelling than product selling. And it worked. Pages look beautiful, and they don’t feel like billboards or smarmy marketing shills. Users won’t be fooled into thinking they can’t post to a Page’s wall or view its info or photos without Liking first. Their first interaction with a brand will be seeing its organic content and what their friends are saying. That’s good for users, and it will keep Facebook a place people want to spend time."

Convincing the world a sales pitch is actually a conversation and an advertisement is a narrative? Philip K. Dick couldn't have written it better.

Nitasha Tiku likes daytime drinking?

In the past few days, Facebook users may have noticed a big change in the format of ads tacked onto their personal photos. We first caught glimpse of it next to photos of a colleague and her adorable baby baby whose sweet face was suddenly juxtaposed next to a sponsored post about VOD distribution. Startin' 'em off early!

While the new photo viewer, which moves comments and ads from below the photo to a more prominent placement on the side, started showing up earlier this month, this week Facebook began implementing the Google+-esque format more heavily. Ads tend to show up—and how!—next to photos without many comments.

"Put it this way," says Peter Kafka at AllThingsD, "I look at Facebook a lot, and I didn’t even realize that Facebook had been showing me ads when I clicked on photos. Now I can’t avoid them." Mr. Kafka then proceeds to engage in a conversation with an imaginary drunk Facebook employee who lets it slip that, "If this format works, it means we’ll have opened up a huge slug of real estate we weren’t using. Boom! Instant revenue stream!"

"Boom" is one word for the jarring new ad format; "Ehhh" is another. We're not naive enough to think Facebook is a benevolent keeper of our cherished memories. Especially not when the now mandatory Timeline was designed to integrate brands into your identity, overall advertising revenue accounted for $3.15 billion in 2011 and failure to bring display ads in mobile was listed under "Risk Factors" in its S-1 filing. But the MySpacification of Facebook does remind of us another line in the "Risks" section: "if our users decrease their level of engagement with Facebook . . ."

Facebook Timeline is finally, totally, completely here for everyone (who didn't already hack their way into it)! Huzzah! If you don't know what Facebook Timeline is, you're about to: It's the social network's new interface that gives you not one, but two profile pictures. Again: Huzzah! Also, it organizes everything you've done on Facebook into an indexed, historical record. It is crazy. So crazy, in fact, that it prompted one Harvard professor to note with disgust—in the New York Times, no less—that in the context of Timeline, your life on the internet is evolving into...a series of very organized pieces of mouse poop. Seriously.

Via Jenna Wortham at the New York Times:

“There’s no act too small to record on your permanent record,” said Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor at Harvard who studies how the Internet affects society. “All of the mouse droppings that appear as we migrate around the Web will be saved.”

Yup! Facebook Timeline is crazy and scary. But again, remember, you get two profile pictures, so your little mousy face can be in two places at once right above your very organized and despicable life that is so well indexed it makes opposition research for the day you decide to run for public office look less like an actual task requiring skill than one requiring mostly just sentient brainwaves.

Get off Facebook while you still can, is the point.

[Previously, regarding Facebook Timeline: It’s like Tumblr meets Flavors.Me meets the Wayback Machine in a dark alley, high on crack cocaine, holding a rusty box-cutter.]

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek