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Summary of Beacon Drama
December 3rd, 2007
I’m sure Facebook’s PR team didn’t get much rest this weekend, as media coverage of the privacy implications of Facebook’s Beacon program surged late in the week. Here’s a quick summary of what’s happened and what people are saying:
CA Security Advisor Research Blog
Facebook is recording what you do when you’re on Beacon-enabled sites, even when you’re logged out of Facebook, and that’s not cool. Not only that, but their Customer Service team is “materially misrepresenting” what’s really going on.
Coke is backing out of using Beacon even though it was a “Landmark Partner” at the Nov 6th launch event. Coke is saying it thought Beacon was going to be different than it is (?).
It’s going to be hard to fix Beacon without completely re-doing it.
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December 3rd, 2007 at 7:44 am
I did an analysis comparing different ways to accomplish what Beacon does with their impact on participation and privacy.
http://blog.agrawals.org/2007/12/02/finding-the-right-level-of-friction-for-facebook-beacon/
Beacon can be a valuable feature. It’s very much in line with what Facebook does. Facebook’s reason for existence is to distribute information about your personal life to your friends. That’s what has made it popular to the tune of more than 40 million users and a lofty $15 billion valuation. People clearly want to share their information with their friends. Facebook Photos significantly reduces the friction in viewing photos; as a result it has quickly become the number one photo sharing site on the Web.