In an interesting twist if irony Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg sued the Harvard online magazine 02138 for posting several unflattering documents on their website. A federal judge ruled that the documents could remain online. It appears that 02138 obtained them by accident, but not illegally. A clerk mistakenly gave them to the author of the unflattering article.
All this is on the heels of continuing issues and confusion surrounding Facebook’s advertising initiative called Beacon. It turns out Coke is holding off of using the service because they feel that they were sold on the notion that users could “opt-in” when in fact users actually have to “opt-out” in order to NOT have their personal information exploited by marketers. Not exactly a subtle distinction. From the New York Times:
“We have adopted a bit of a ‘wait and see’ as far as what we are going to do with Beacon because we are not sure how consumers are going to respond,” said Carol Kruse, Coke’s vice president of global interactive marketing, this morning. Coke had been one of Facebook’s “Landmark Partners” because it had made an especially large commitment to use the site’s new features. - November 30th, 2007
Granted, users of Facebook sign an agreement that gives Facebook the right to do whatever they want with their data, and that data is truly worth a lot to marketers and advertisers, but Facebook really needs to appreciate their true commodity here: people’s eyes. If users find themselves continually becoming a “beacon” for advertisers they just might start looking elsewhere.
After all, a little privacy goes a long way, doesn’t it Mark?
Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans@Next2Friends.com
www.Next2Friends.com
