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Ad Age Digital has an article about how 50,000 Facebook users joined a group to protest the new Beacon broadcast advertising service:

Consumers, in case you’ve been living under a rock, are in control.

For the latest evidence, consider the massive outcry that erupted over Facebook’s much-vaunted Beacon program, hailed as a major ingredient in the advertising program the company launched last month. Facebook last week responded by reining in the system. Facebook users will now have to opt in to participate, instead of the previous, more passive opt-out prompts.

The Beacon system tells a user’s friends about a user’s actions on sites outside of Facebook. For example, if a user purchases a product on a Beacon-participating site such as Overstock.com, which Forrester Analyst Charlene Li did, it would broadcast that purchase (in Ms. Li’s case, a coffee table), to Ms. Li’s Facebook network.

Perhaps the Facebook team needs to pick up a copy of the Cluetrain Manifesto? If not, they will have to continue to face the repercussions of the Law of Unintended Consequences:

One commenter on Ms. Li’s blog said Beacon had ruined his marriage proposal by broadcasting an Overstock.com purchase of an engagement ring to his entire network — including his girlfriend.

The Facebook Beacon, and tools for information gathering like it, have massive implications for the future of privacy (we’ll get into this a little more deeply with a book review I have for next week). Will this kind of “Social Advertising” force consumers into creating multiple online personas? What can companies with less-than-honorable intentions do with this technology? And how long before a disgruntled college whiz-kid turns it on its head and does something that no one expects?

At least Facebook is responding quickly, their agility shows that they are paying attention to the conversation - even if they did not think far enough ahead to anticipate the response to this sort of breach of trust. “Opt-out” is the default position that all advertisers should take in order to avoid these scandals. That is called Permission Marketing. (Yes, the link is to an article that is 9 years old. That means no one has an excuse for not seeing this coming! And I am sure that Seth Godin will have more to say on this soon.)

“Opt-in” as the default is called Spam. And there is an entire industry devoted to defeating it. Facebook is a creative new idea, one that has not reached its full potential yet. The big question is, do they see their potential as making money by becoming an advertising giant, or making money because they have become a social networking giant?

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/57tbvn. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

There is an interesting article at Ad Age Digital about Facebook and how advertisers and marketers are using the service to leverage the social graph:

[Facebook could have]…a new cultural role for the mass online social network that recasts what has been mainly a time waster as a useful and efficient communications tool for business and personal use. It’s a vision that requires its users to take its conventions very, very seriously…

It is the last part of that quote that I find most interesting. “Taking conventions seriously” can be a tricky thing among the free spirits that inhabit the Web 2.0 universe. In fact, there are very few conventions, and new iterations are being run every day, as Facebook users (and non-users) work to grasp the new tools and connections that Web 2.0 provides.

The real question is about what the future may hold for Facebook, is it a “game-changer”, or a precursor to a better virtual model of real life connections?

What is at stake is not only the difference between a Facebook that’s an interesting online media company and one that’s a game-changer, but also the real, long-term value of online social networks to marketers, especially when you consider that an accurate modeling of interpersonal relationships on a large scale could be the key to unlocking the mysteries of word-of-mouth and understanding how consumers influence each other in a detailed way.

How do you use Facebook? If you don’t, why not? Leave a Comment and let’s discuss what the future may hold. How do you think that Facebook can change the game?

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/5luc33. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

I have been crazy busy this past week, so I am catching up on my RSS reading and here are some interesting links that I thought I would share:

• Seth Godin points out that Prince, Madonna, and Radiohead have boarded the Cluetrain.
  

  [Godin writes:]This is the sort thing I’ve been talking about for seven years and many unknown bands have been doing for at least that long.

• Via TechCrunch: Is your website accessible by the visually impaired? A judge in California has ruled that a lawsuit against Target is eligible for “class-action” status, and may require websites to provide access to visually impaired users.
• Via TechCrunch: Facebook is going after LinkedIn, adding a new feature in the middle of the night.
• I have added a new bookmarking widget [ ] from Add This.com. Check it out, down by the Comments bar. And please use it to save any posts that you find useful.
• Rick Cockrum [who writes and podcasts at Shards of Consciousness] is guest posting at Alex Shalman.com: (I am a subscriber, and you should be too)
  

  We have forgotten the difference between that which is productive and that which is constructive. For all too many people efficiency and productivity has become an end in itself. Productivity isn’t bad. It is a way to conserve resources and maximize our talents. But when it becomes an end in itself it becomes as much a blight as aimlessly wandering through our lives.

• Talking about free WiFi over at Doc Searls Weblog:
  

  Chris Pirillo: According to my friend Mike Elgan at ComputerWorld.com, Starbucks will begin providing their customers with free Wi-Fi within the next year. Specifically, Mike sees free wi-fi at McDonalds forcing the issue, and concludes…

  Unsurprisingly, coffee drinks at Starbucks are super profitable. By making Wi-Fi free, Starbucks will be able to counter the lure of free Wi-Fi at McDonald’s and not miss out on the real money — the sale of coffee.

  Well, that’s my prediction. I’ll report back one year from now — or when Starbucks makes Wi-Fi free, whichever comes first.

• Kate has some pointers for “Hot Desking” at Blog to Discovery
• Marina takes a radical approach to purposing her home over at Sufficient Thrust:
  

  • I put eight dry-erase boards up around the living room area and hung my inboxes on the wall next to them. (It was only later that I read about David Allen’s admiration for a friend who converted his living room into his office.)
  • The kitchen counter, which opened into the living room, became the perfect spot for the printer and was the perfect height to work on my laptop.
  • Instead of a chair, I use a stability ball, or I stand. (Burns more calories!)

  I have been thinking about this myself, as I pack up the house for our own big move to Portland, Maine.

So that is what I have been reading about this morning. I will be doing some more packing this afternoon, and I’ll post more about the move later in the week. Have a great Sunday!

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/5n2bv2. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

I have to admit that I am new to both of these social networking sites. Really new. I received a few invitations to join them over the past week and decided to give it a shot. I must admit that I am not sure just what to do with them, or even if I should have bothered.

Segala.com says that LinkedIn is over, but that is where my first invite came from. According to my email address book, I am in contact from time to time with quite a few members.

Jemima Kiss says Facebook is where it’s at, and FB allows you to invite people from your mailing list that aren’t on FB already. That is convenient.

So I will ask the readers. Which site do you use, and why?

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/6xv37r. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen