While Facebook's approach to involving the community in developing its new terms is admirable, there is a glaring problem with the vote that makes me question the results: Less than 1% of Facebook members participated.

According to Ullyot, who serves as the company's general counsel, more than 600,000 people cast their votes before polling ended on Thursday. While that's a significant number, it's a drop in the bucket compared to the . If this were a public referendum, it's quite likely the vote would be considered invalid.

So what happened? It's certainly not a case of apathy -- the widespread condemnation of Facebook's unilateral move in February to change its terms of service and revise its governance policies.

But what Facebook failed to do was adequately publicize the vote this month. Ullyot states that the company made "significant efforts" to spread the word, by showing messages and advertisements and even translating the documents and the voting application into French, Spanish, Italian, and German. However, many users who left comments on Ullyot's blog claim that they didn't see these messages , or only found out about it through mainstream press coverage. Here's a sample of the reaction:

Toni Romano: