David Mandell says Me.dium learned from Facebook

Me.dium.com, which has created what it calls a social browser, will have two big challenges to building its business.

One is the same as every other social Web company -- building an audience.

But given that its business model relies on convincing Internet surfers to share data on every Web site they've visited, it will also need to allay privacy concerns

That kind of comprehensive data capture is what caused an uproar for Facebook when it rolled out its Beacon advertising platform.

Medium co-founder David Mandell tells Vator.tv's John Shinal that the company learned from that experience and is giving its users control over who sees their data.

"When you're using it, you know it's there," in the form of a button that alerts you that your data is being captured, he says.  "It's clear that your sharing data with Me.dium and with the community."

Whenever someone is using the service, they are sharing data with Me.dium, which in turn will share it with advertisers that want to place behavioral-based ads.

More and more users are willing to do that, as long as they either get something in return or feel they have control over who sees it and when. If Me.dium can follow through on Mandell's pledge that the company wants to give users the power over their data set, the social browsing aspect will likely prove attractive to Web surfers.