Comments on: Facebook Settles Beacon Case: No More Beacon, But There’s a $9.5M “Privacy Fund”

By: Facebook’s Conflict of Interest in Privacy

Facebook’s Conflict of Interest in Privacy — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 20:44:05 +0000

[...] Facebook Settles Beacon Case: No More Beacon, But There’s a $9.5M “Privacy Fund” (insidefacebook.com) [...]

By: The Demise of Facebook’s Beacon, and Lessons Learned « The Social Scene

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:34:56 +0000

[...] The Demise of Facebook’s Beacon, and Lessons Learned 6 10 2009 Facebook has reached a settlement in the class-action lawsuit over it’s ill-fated advertising platform, Beacon. Launched in 2007, Beacon tracked user activity on third-party affiliate sites and posted the resulting data on the user’s Facebook profile page. This attempt to generate word-of-mouth buzz by broadcasting the consumer habits of users became an instant controversy, sparking concerns over privacy, transparency, and the inadequacy of user controls. A Computer Associates report amplified these concerns, alleging that the Beacon program collected data from third-party sites for users who aren’t even Facebook members. In the wake of the controversy, affiliate partners quickly abandoned the program, and some became ensnared in legal battles of their own. With yesterday’s proposed settlement, the Beacon program is now officially dead. [...]

By: facebookmarketing.de | Vanity Login, Beacon tot, Watir, Vertrauen in Facebook (Kurzmitteilungen 13)

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:18:02 +0000

[...] in Deutschland nicht sonderlich bekannte oder verbreitete Funktion, das Facebook Beacon wurde nun nach einem Rechtsstreit deaktiviert. Beacons erlaubten es Aktivitäten von Facebook Nutzern auf anderen Webseiten auch ohne deren [...]

By: forest

forest — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 06:48:18 +0000

Facebook needed a kick in the butt. It’s always been a fairly invasive program and this was a good boot!

By: Eric Eldon

Eric Eldon — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:36:54 +0000

Agreed, Rado.

Jay, I’d personally like to see the email-reply feature, too. It strikes me as the sort of thing they’ll have one day, but we shall see.

By: Jay Cuthrell

Jay Cuthrell — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 13:54:29 +0000

When I consider the use of Facebook notification emails that are sent from the address “noreply” by Facebook I’m curious where Barry’s concern over

“how critical it is to provide extensive user control over how information is shared”

will evolve if/when Facebook ever gets around to allowing actual replies to notifications in the same manner as FriendFeed does now that they are a whole company.

I asked this question at TC50 and they dodged it. A second person followed up with a similar question and they dodged it again.

So, knowing there is this “privacy fund”, I wonder how much of that fund will be devoted to addressing any deviation from the noreply methods used today for email communication outside of the Facebook silo.

By: Rado Stoyanov

Rado Stoyanov — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 21:44:35 +0000

Very strong move.

Perhaps they realized that a huge chunk of monetization will go with an almost exact approach and stream. Facebook Connect established the channel and now the flow will commence, only this time in the other direction.

Furthermore this foundation, if run well, may boost the next step in usability. Through education and guidance. As always. :)

By: Facebook Settles Beacon Case: No More Beacon, But There’s a $9.5M “Privacy Fund” [ Inside Facebook ]

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 02:22:00 +0000

[...] Facebook Settles Beacon Case: No More Beacon, But There’s a $9.5M “Privacy Fund” Found 35 minutes, 30 seconds ago Facebook tried to create a new form of advertising in 2007 with the launch of Beacon. In conjunction with a number of big-name brands, Beacon automatically tracked Facebook users action’s on other sites, then displayed that information to their friends back on Facebook. The program is now officially dead. A class-action lawsuit filed in 2008 has [...] From: http://www.insidefacebook.com [...]