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Looking for the Next Great Network

December 7, 2007 //
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There’ve been some rumblings that Facebook has jumped the shark. (Recall the mid-October Jossip survey about annoying Facebook habits.)

SiliconAlleyInsider yesterday noted that ABCNews.com’s political reporter Facebook pages are bombing. This could just be because they chose the wrong subject to launch with. Or because people are just really tired of the political campaign, which seems to have gone on too long already.

I predict within the next 12 months we’ll see users trickle out Facebook’s door and head to the next networking site.

Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb.com took a look at the upgraded features in Multiply.com. While they look very attactive, I’m getting tired of signing up for yet another social network that will ultimately flame out.

So what does this mean for news organizations? A huge opportunity to further engage a loyal audience and bring in new readers/community members/eyeballs.

Social networks require four things:

  • a community of active users who can connect from any device — desktop, laptop, phone
  • a way to send private and public messages (including comments) to each other and to groups
  • a repository for files of unlimited (or at least very large) size and a way to tag, search and connect those files to other content
  • good, unique, content (which, for news organizations, should be a piece of cake)
  • a way to search, select and rank all types of files, comments, users and content, and share the data anywhere

Think you can do it?

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Categories Social Media

Facebook Says Sorry, But Now I’m Confused

December 6, 2007 //
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Mark Zuckerberg apologized for the Beacon mess yesterday, and added a way for all social ads to be turned off — at least within Facebook.

But if you logon to the site, the “Privacy Settings for External Websites” page has a rather confusing message.

Facebook External Sites Privacy Page

On the one hand, the page says, “Please note that these settings only affect notifications on Facebook. You will still be notified on affiliate websites when they send stories to Facebook. You will be able to decline individual stories at that time.”

On the other, it says, “Don’t allow any websites to send stories to my profile.”

Clarity. I’d like clarity.

Computer Associates did some more digging around today and didn’t like what they found. While the privacy announcement is a good first move, they said, data that users now assume isn’t being transmitted still is, and Facebook has not put their privacy policy into their legal notice:

The silent transmission of data about actions on third-party websites to Facebook poses a serious risk, and must be mitigated by both prominent notice to the user, and a binding commitment on Facebook’s part to handle the data properly.

Nevertheless, yesterday’s announcement seemed to placate the masses. Caroline McCarthy at CNet News got some Beacon partner reaction.

Personally, I think what caused so many problems for Facebook’s Beacon launch was arrogance and perhaps greed. They’ve been through the privacy riot before, when news feeds were first introduced. They could have done better, it’s true. But given their past experience, they should have done better by putting their users, and not their advertising partners, first.

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Categories Making Money, Social Media

Facebook May Dims Beacon

November 30, 2007 //
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Late Thursday night, Facebook finally caved and said they’d turn Beacon into an opt-in rather than opt-out program, though you have to opt-in on a site-by-site basis.

Despite the change, one concern raised by many remains: Beacon still appears to collect your information and send it to Facebook, even if you don’t opt in.

The question then, as Nate Weiner points out, is what does Facebook do with that info?

Seems to me you have a few choices if you want to stay on Facebook:

  • You could just accept that Beacon exists and not worry about it.
  • You could be vigilant and use the Firefox BlockSite plugin and block http://www.facebook.com/beacon/*. (Nate has visual instructions.)
  • You could avoid the companies that have signed up with Beacon, if you can figure out just who those companies are.

At launch, there were 44 partners. I haven’t found all of them, but from the FAQ, they include AllPosters.com, Blockbuster, Bluefly.com, CBSSports.com and Dotspotter (both part of CBS Interactive), eBay, ExpoTV, Fandango, Gamefly, Hotwire, IAC brands (CollegeHumor, Busted Tees, iWon, Citysearch, Pronto.com and echomusic), Joost, Kiva, Kongregate, LiveJournal, Live Nation, Mercantila, National Basketball Association, NYTimes.com, Overstock.com, (RED), Redlight, SeamlessWeb, Sony Online Entertainment LLC, Sony Pictures, STA Travel, The Knot, TripAdvisor, Travel Ticker, Travelocity, TypePad, viagogo, Vox, Yelp, WeddingChannel.com and Zappos.com.

Earlier:

Business Week and the Financial Times are reporting that Facebook may modify its social ad platform Beacon.

But as Business Week points out, that could put the company in a difficult position. Advertisers who signed on were expecting a boon from Beacon, if not in profit, then at least in goodwill. Facebook was also counting on Beacon to bolster its valuation. But users have threatened to abandon the service and smear the company name — this isn’t the first time members have accused the site of invading individual privacy.

Executives can huff all they want about privacy being an illusion in a digital age. But this latest backlash seems to be more fodder for public claims that big business is out of touch with real-world expectations.

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Categories Social Media

Facebook Privacy ‘Fix’ Isn’t Much of One at All

November 27, 2007 //
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First there was concern over Beacon.

Then came the launch that Faced a thousand users.

What followed was the public and predicted invasion of privacy outcry, Facebook’s claim of implied consent, and Moveon.org’s petition.

It seems people either weren’t seeing the social ads that showed just what they’d bought and where they made their purchase, or they didn’t understand that they only had 20 seconds to opt-out of having the ad posted on their Facebook feed.

Now comes news that Facebook announced a change to its social ads, but as Wendy Davis points out:

When pressed about how the statement distributed to the media yesterday reflected any changes, the spokesman said, “We fixed a technical issue to be sure the first notification fully displayed since some users were missing it.”

Well, if that’s the case — if Facebook’s “fixed” something so that the notifications it intended to launch with actually work — it’s hardly worth bragging about.

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Categories Social Media
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