Daily Marauder

FACEBOOK BEACON: THE UPDATE

Facebook Launches Beacon

Facebook Beacon was released in early November as part of the Facebook Ads platform, a solution designed to initiate Facebook revenue generation. Facebook Beacon tracks and reports the activities of Facebook users on 44 web participating sites such as Fandango and Blockbuster.

Here’s the idea. For the advertiser, this product offers a way to track Facebook users across their sites. In addition, those users then post activities on the Facebook News Feed thereby generating word of mouth advertising for that advertiser. For example, I buy a movie ticket to see Bee Movie on Fandango. That action is then posted on my Facebook News Feed.

The Backlash

Users were none too pleased. Facebook responded with a revised policy for Beacon at the end of last week.

New Policy

When on a partcipating web site, a user will see a notification box like the one below asking if this transaction can be published in Facebook on the News Feed.

If a user closes this box without responding, they will receive the following second notification when logging in to Facebook:

The user can then choose to remove, click okay to publish the story in Facebook, or ignore. If this notification is ignored, it will continue to reappear until the user finally makes a decision. Notifications galore. . .

Here’s the last option. Users can opt out of receiving any Beacon notifications by clicking on External Websites on the Facebook site and clicking Never for all participating sites. The lingering annoyance? There is STILL no global opt out option available for simulataneously opting out of all Beacon notifications with one click. If the participating site number rose from 44 to 98, one could see how clicking Never 98 times would be a bit of a drag.

Advertisers Feeling Shaky

Even AFTER this revised policy was issued, advertisers are backing out of the program. Both Coca-Cola and Overstock have exited stage right. Why?

Well, here’s the really wrong part. Get ready for it.

Get ready for it.

Participating web sites send user data to Facebook even if that user has opt out of the initial notification. Here’s an example, I’m renting a movie through Blockbuster. A notification window pops up asking if I would like that event posted in Facebook. I click No Thanks. That transactional data is sent to Facebook regardless. Not only that, this data is sent to Facebook even if I’m not a Facebook user. Facebook has responded that they delete all of this data. Advertisers don’t want to be saddled with the responsibility of negotiating who is and isn’t a Facebook user and then determining data deletion on their end. That said, as a user, if I click No Thanks, I would assume that no data would be sent. I would be. . .wrong.

Violation of user privacy? Yup, I would think so.

(http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/03/more-facebook-advertisers-bail-from-beacon-plus-new-concerns/ 12/3)