Facebook decides harassing members no longer good idea
Posted
Nov 30 2007, 07:13 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Social networking site Facebook is finally backing away from its overly aggressive and ill-conceived advertising strategy. To understand how maddening this ad push was, consider what happened to Forrester analyst Charlene Li. As she explains on her blog, she recently bought a coffee table on Overstock.com. Then she logged into Facebook and saw this on her page:
She used her personal e-mail address to buy the table and had no idea the purchase would show up on her Facebook news feed for all her friends and work contacts to see. [readmore]
Another Facebook member logged on to see that his girlfriend bought an item he asked for on his Christmas list. Oops. Others saw their movie ticket purchases on Fandango become public knowledge.
More than 50,000 members have protested the system, called Beacon, by signing a petition created by MoveOn.org. Facebook finally gave in yesterday. Now, it will get user approval each time before posting data collected from Beacon. There's no way for a Facebook user to opt out completely and avoid the system altogether. You can read Facebook's Beacon FAQ here.
Facebook expressed its regrets in an online posting:
"We're sorry if we spoiled some of your holiday gift-giving plans. We are really trying to provide you with new meaningful ways, like Beacon, to help you connect and share information with your friends."
No, what Facebook's really trying to do is sell a lot of advertising. And it discovered there was a line it cannot cross, even for the many users in their teens and '20s who are far more relaxed about online privacy than earlier generations.
All of this makes me wonder about Microsoft's decision to pay Facebook $240 million for a 1.6% stake. That investment placed Facebook's value at $15 billion. Screwups like these don't happen with $15 billion companies. Note that no other company has invested in Facebook since, at least not publicly. Did Microsoft get punked?
In any case, Beacon was an idiotic move, and it'll be quite some time before Facebook can toy with its members like this again.
