• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, February 11, 2008

Some leading supporters of social network marketing went public on their opposition to privacy advocates pushing to curtail or restrict the flow of aggregated information about individual social media users on the Web.

“I think that privacy is overblown,” said Arnie Gullov-Singh, VP-product management at Fox Interactive Media, the parent of Myspace.com. “Mostly by people who like to write about it.”

Gullov-Singh said Fox’s research shows that all consumer seem to care about, “is having advertising that is more relevant. And fewer ads like punch the monkey.”

Critical Mass Group Media Director Molly Hop agreed, noting that privacy is overblown in social media.

“I am kind of confused,” she said about the hubbub surrounding the issue. “This is not a journal that you are keeping under your bed. You are going on the World Wide Web.”

Fundamentally, Hop said consumers who post on social network sites are a “Web page” just like any of the billions of others served online.

“On the most simplistic way, you are a page on the Internet, and just like any other page, people are aggregating your data,” she analogized.

The FTC’s Michelle Rosenthal was scribbling away in her legal pad.