Life is grand

Apologies for the dramatic title but this Facebook Beacon story just gets better and better. Zuckerburg and co. have not just fumbled the ball, they have scored an own goal.

First up is that Facebook seem to have misled their own Beacon partners. Coca Cola’s Carol Kruse says that she believed Beacon would be an opt-in system and not opt-out. This is backed up by Louise Story of the New York Times. Whether intentional or not it must make well established and professional companies think twice about working with Facebook. As much as I enjoy the free-for-all attitude of many internet companies you can’t dick around with your reputation and your business partners. They are stuck in their ways and often abusive with their power but they aren’t going to help you rebuild a bridge you just burnt down.

Even if Facebook had got opt-in right it would seem it doesn’t matter; Beacon partners send usage data whether you are a Facebook user or not. It sends it without any permission and Facebook has full access to the data. So if you have visited one of the Beacon partner sites you may just have unwittingly sent Facebook some data, whether you have ever used Facebook or not. The partners include Microsoft, CBS, BlockBuster (don’t go renting anything dodgy now), eBay (don’t buy those “herbs”), Joost (don’t watch that channel), NYTimes (so, you are a conservative eh), Sony, Travelocity (want an upgrade to first class for that flight you never told us about?) and many more.

I apologies for ever thinking good thoughts about Beacon. It seemed a cool idea, creepy to some but interesting to me. The implementation has been botched and the situation mishandled. Modern internet companies call themselves transparent and in touch with their users, they spout phrases like “your data” and “you set the privacy.”

Facebook is giving us a bad name and knee-capping our future by making arrogant mistakes with 50 million users. This isn’t some little web 2.0 site that a bunch of us tolerant geeks use. This is prime-time, mass-market and those folks don’t tend to forgive and forget. They go to another site.

Some people say Facebook is the next Google. Good lord, we are doomed if they are.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 2nd, 2007 at 12:37 am and is filed under Post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.