Mark’s feeling the pressure as Beacon’s chances of survival get dimmer.
We’re coming up to the one month anniversary of Beacon’s announcement and the privacy concerns surrounding it have yet to disappear. Concerns have actually grown and now include their landmark advertising partners–an original list of over 40 websites including Coca-Cola, Sony Pictures, Sony Online, Blockbuster, The Knot, TripAdvisor, TypePad, Overstock.com, Yelp, WeddingChannel.com, Zappos.com and Verizon. It is quite the impressive list of web sites that attract large amounts of traffic on a daily basis. However, a few of these early-adopters (Coca-Cola, Overstock.com) have yet to implement it on their end, and may never will.
For those who have been bombarded with Beacon in the title of their RSS feeds and have ignored them, here is the gist on how it works.
Beacon is part of the Facebook Ads platform that was introduced on November 6th. Beacon tracks certain activities of all users on participating web sites, and then sends all of this data back to Facebook. Within the data, those who are identified as Facebook members and have opted-in to Beacon have announcements inserted into their news feed. Activities that are sent to your Facebook friends include purchasing a product, signing up for a service, and adding an item to a wish list.
The biggest cause for concern is that ALL visitors to the site, Facebook member or not, will have their information sent to Facebook for some sort of analysis. At the bare minimum it is to identify which visitors are Facebook users (a Facebook cookie is pulled by the affiliate). They state that all additional data will be deleted. However, Facebook broke consumer trust when it was revealed that members of their staff spy on members–and it may take more than a simple promise from Facebook to reassure their betrayed user base and their affiliates such breaches of privacy don’t occur again.
Stefan Berteau of Computer Associates points out, “There is, to a certain extent, a privacy concern with the affiliate site; in that it’s important for them to disclose that they’ll be sending information about user actions to Facebook”. Concerns like these are what have stopped certain affiliates from implementing Beacon – along with the obvious analytics Facebook can mine on their affiliate’s websites.
Facebook has gone ahead and implemented some of the feedback (demands) from its outraged users by changing the default setting of having to opt-out of Beacon to having to opt-in. That was a big blow to their advertising platform - the number of exposures they can offer their Beacon affiliates decrease significantly.
If you’re really paranoid, and want to surf the 40+ affiliate websites without Facebook getting “your information”, the power of web 2.0 has already created a wikiHow page on how to put on the internet version of a tin-foil hat.
No real sane Facebook user is going to opt-in to Beacon - everyone wins but the user.
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It’s Facebook’s ambiguity on the issue that angers me just as much as the invasion of privacy. To be so indecisive and to take such a weak stance on your plan of action is not only going to alienate its users, but its affiliates as well. You don’t tell people one thing and then do another. Trust is a major principle to n-geners and in business in general. It appears that Coca-Cola finally understands this. Especially after their ‘guerilla’ Coke Zero campaign bombed. Regardless, the influx of advertisements will probably do more harm than good. Even if Facebook hasn’t reached it’s saturation point, I wonder if the excessive number of applications and abundance of advertisements will drive n-geners away, or will we simply stop looking?
Comment by Derek Pokora - December 4, 2007 6:08 pm
The only sane option is to protest by deactivating your facebook account. Drastic yes - but this will stop these madmen. End the Beacon Betrayal.
Comment by Kevin Smith - December 4, 2007 10:08 pm
Good insight.
Quit the Coca-Cola bashing…or, add a disclaimer about being a Pepsi shill (and Google Pepsi+Burma)
Comment by Mike Dover - December 5, 2007 11:42 am
Or… Google Coke + India.
Comment by DH - December 5, 2007 4:21 pm
Touche
Comment by Mike Dover - December 5, 2007 6:46 pm