Hey, honey those racey photos you just posted on my Facebook wall, well you are in big trouble, Facebook owns them, in “perpentuity”. Now that means “forever”. Too late to reach for the little sock to cover up as their new contract says: “You hereby grant Facebook irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license. If you remove the content, the license granted automatically expires, however you acknowledge that the company may retain archived copies of your user content”. Forget your dream of a political career – unless you remembered your Facebook privacy settings. Did you? If so, you just have me and my vast social network of mashup-crazed girlfriends to worry about.

According to compete.com Facebook is the worlds most popular social networking site boasting over 1.2 billion visits this January. My Space fell to second spot with 810 million and micro-blogging Twitter rose to third spot from 22nd with 54.2 million visits. Flixster, LinkedIn and Tagged each gained in popularity in the past month. So, you can imagine with over 64 million users how big the uproar was when Facebook made changes to its user contract allowing them to do whatever they want with your uploaded content.

Users say they were not notified and demand ”full control” anywhere, anytime, over “their” created content on Facebook. But didn’t they read the clause that says Facebook has the right “without notice” to make changes to its user agreement? Also, continued use of Facebook creates the offer, acceptance, and consideration needed to form a contract.

Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, claims their decision was in the best interests of the user but has failed to communicate clearly how this is the case. This is not the first run-in Facebook has had with its users over privacy concerns. The controversial Beacon service that automatically placed ads in members profiles based on their activities was met with petitions and harsh criticizm. Facebook apologized and pulled the service but did face a couple of class-action lawsuits.

There are certain hazards to sharing over social networks. The internet is a highly viral environment and in the very connected world we live in comments, photos, videos, and the like, live and breathe much longer than often originally intended. As such picking the sites where you are comfortable is important. User contracts should always be reviewed. For example if you are concerned about sharing photos over Facebook you might consider posting on Google’s Picassa. Their user contract sets forth in section 11 that “it has no right, title or interest to your intellectual property unless you agree in writing with Google”.