Facebook Beacon Summary
December 9, 2007 – 3:27 pmBefore I get into it, Facebook’s PR is brilliant (read last bold paragraph for explanation).
There’s been a lot of talk on Facebook Beacon and its privacy settings. Really, a lot. More than was probably necessary. That’s why I didn’t cover it. But now that the whole thing is over, and in the event you somehow missed the surplus of other people’s blog posts about Beacon, here’s a quick summary.
What is Beacon?
For those who don’t know, Facebook Beacon is FB’s new advertising platform (a little less new, now) that, when logged in to your FB account, essentially follows you to other sites. What it did when you got to these other sites is monitor your actions (like making a purchase on Amazon) and then add that action to your Mini-feed in Facebook (it’s since been updated).
People whine about privacy and then do nothing.
A lot of bloggers, users, and non-Facebook users I’m sure complained about the privacy settings on Facebook. There was no [easy] way to prevent these items from being added to your Mini-Feed (I happened to do a quick search and blocked it). MoveOn and others petitioned and complained against Facebook’s lack of opt-out functionality. Even before Facebook’s response, people did nothing. Apparently upset, but not enough to remove their accounts over this debacle.
Facebook Caves [sorta]. Beacon still not opt out. People complain more.
After lots of complaints, Facebook makes a change. They make it so if you’re on a site and their Beacon platform detects an action (like buying something on Amazon) it will pop up an option where you can accept or deny the publishing of this action to your Mini-Feed. People are semi-happy but want full opt-out functionality so they complain more.
Success! Facebook adds opt-out ability with public apology from Zuckerberg!
Facebook finally adds the ability to completely opt-out of having Beacon’s publish your actions to your Mini-feed. Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook CEO) posts a public apology on the Facebook blog.
Facebook does brilliant PR
Paul McEnany, an awesome blogger (you should read his blog if you don’t), has a more cynical take with the idea that all this garbage on privacy was completely planned by Facebook. First I disagreed. Then I thought about it a bit more and realized that the only reason I disagreed was because it would be just so brilliant.
Just taking a quick stab at it: Facebook as a company is hugely intelligent. They know their users well, especially because the majority of them are their users (a great point Paul makes). With that in mind, they are obviously going to be aware of their crappy privacy settings. Why roll out a version with bad privacy settings, then?
- Press. It starts off as bad press, “Facebook Beacon’s privacy needs changing.”
- While everyone is still talking about Facebook’s Beacon and its privacy, they all miss or quickly forget that MySpace’s just released their own friend’s feed.
- Facebook shows they “listen” by releasing a more privacy friendly version of Beacon, but still not the real deal. People complain more. Facebook gets more Press.
- After more complaints, Facebook finally releases the real version of Beacon, with full privacy control. Zuckerberg then posts a personal apology on the Facebook blog.
- Bad press turns to good press, Facebook looks like they listened (when they already knew), Zuckerberg looks more like a nice guy, and Facebook was just the center of buzz for the past week.
Brilliant.
3 Responses to “Facebook Beacon Summary”
Thanks for the good words, man!
And I’m still convinced that they did it on purpose, too. Also, all the advertisers were told that those privacy settings would be there, and the previous versions of beacon (up until the last one before roll out), included them. Maybe I’m must paranoid, but that all sounds like BS.
But the bottom line is the point you made, nobody is leaving. if the users care, it’s not enough to cancel. And I’m not canceling either. That’s the beauty of sites like myspace and facebook. While the chances of success are almost nothing, the need for brandy loyalty is mitigated by friend loyalty. Facebook might piss you off, but if all your friends are there, you’re unlikely to leave…
By Paul McEnany on Dec 11, 2007
Hey, Paul!
Thanks for stopping by :)
The point about the advertisers is a strong one, and one that actually occurred to me as well a day or two ago when I read/commented on Mack’s post on the MySpacing of Facebook.
The friend loyalty is a very strong (and scary factor). I wonder how long it will take some companies to start ignoring what has been traditional brand loyalty and focus more on building a cohesive community that creates friend loyalty around their brand. In a sense this is what social networks are doing, but I am thinking more mainstream. This is certainly one thing that has lead to World of Warcrafts success.
By Nathan Snell on Dec 11, 2007