UPDATE on Friday, April 24: The auditors have just confirmed the official vote results. There were 665,654 votes cast and users supported the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and Principles by an overwhelming margin — 74.37 percent. We will adopt these documents and post them to Facebook and the Site Governance Page in the coming weeks.


Today, the Facebook site governance vote ended after a week in which you were able to voice your opinions as to which documents should serve as the foundation for governing the site. On behalf of everyone at Facebook, I'd like to thank all of you who participated by voting and the users and experts who earlier commented on the proposed documents.

The final results are now being reviewed by an outside auditor, but the preliminary numbers indicate that approximately 74.4 percent of users who voted chose the proposed documents – the new Facebook Principles and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities – over the existing Terms of Use. More than 600,000 users participated in the vote.

We strongly believe that our proposed documents satisfied the concerns raised in February. The outcome of the vote and commentary from informed third parties seem to support this conclusion, including:

• Julius Harper, co-founder of the first and largest Facebook group against the previous change to the terms
• Anne Kathrine Petteroe, co-founder of the first and largest Facebook group against the previous change to the terms
• Jonathan Zittrain, co-director of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society
• The Consumerist, which originally reported on our revised terms in February

So, what is next? Assuming the auditors confirm the preliminary vote result in favor of the proposed documents, we'll be adopting the Principles and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities as the governing documents for the Facebook site. We're pleased that users supported the proposed documents and validated our efforts to respond to their concerns. You can expect to see the new documents on the site in the coming weeks. After that, all future proposed changes to the Principles and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities will be subject to the notice, comment and voting provisions of the documents.

The more than 600,000 users who voted constitute a significant number of people, but at the same time that's a small number compared to our user base of more than 200 million. We made significant efforts to make voting easy and to give everyone the opportunity to vote — including by translating the documents and voting application into several of the most popular languages on the site, showing a message about the vote on users' home pages, and running advertisements and videos across Facebook promoting the vote.

We'd hoped to have a bigger turnout for this inaugural vote, but it is important to keep in mind that this vote was a first for users just like it was a first for Facebook. We are hopeful that there will be greater participation in future votes. In the meantime, we're going to consider lowering the 30-percent threshold that the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities establishes for a user vote to be binding.

Thanks again for voting and for your constructive comments and questions during the process. Don't forget to become a fan of the Facebook Site Governance Page to be notified of future proposed changes to the Facebook Principles and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.


Ted Ullyot is Facebook's general counsel.