As reported in various blog and print sources, Facebook has announced changes to Beacon, the controversial ad program. According to the reports, there will be a change to the story posting flow, requiring users to approve a story before it is sent to the Newsfeed. This does address some of the concerns regarding information leaks through Beacon.
In a nutshell, when a user on a third-party site sets off a Beacon action, they will be presented with the popup. If the users does nothing, the story will be sent to a queue, rather than to the Facebook. The next time a user sets off a Beacon action, they will be presented with a list of stories to send to Facebook, and can select or reject stories as they deem appropriate. Facebook will also make more clear the posting flow, promising prominent notifications when one logs in and is presented stories to approve.
Notably, there is no mention of a global opt-out, which I believe is a mistake. One of the critical problems with Beacon is it breaks boundaries of privacy between sites, and Facebook provides no apparatus for restoring the privacy. As a result, cookie-based pageview tracking will also continue to occur.
While the response to MoveOn’s call has been tepid – 50,000 signees, the response to Facebook Beacon is still coming. Beacon isn’t evenly distributed around the web; one may not use Fandango or Epicurious or read Techcrunch, meaning there are a lot of Facebook users out there still waiting to step on these Beacon privacy landmines. This is a distinctly different situation from Newsfeed, which was extremely direct. This story will evolve; it will be more of a rolling problem.
In other quick news, tomorrow’s Virtual Citizenship and New Technologies Symposium will be broadcast into Second Life. My talk is at 9:30AM (Eastern) if you’re interested, but I’d really recommend you checking out the talks of my very esteemed fellow presenters. If the excellent conversation we had at dinner is any indication of what to expect tomorrow, it will be worth your while. Full instructions for the Second Life simulcast on the Symposium website.
Fred Stutzman is a doctoral student, researcher and teaching fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Information and Library Science. He studies how people use social media.
Not surprised in the slightest at this. It’s becoming a pattern at Facebook -
1. roll out audacious new privacy-flattening initiative
2. user outrage
3. superficial change to 1. with no real substantive rollback
Great posts on this topic Fred. If you look at the analysis on the Times bits blog, it is clear this was not an “oops we got it wrong” problem for Facebook. Instead they set up the opt out options to be difficult to understand and hard to find. Here is a clear case of exploiting poor usability to encourage more Beacon ads.
I am doing an in depth study into the design and use of privacy settings on social networkings sites, and have come across other examples where privacy is implemented in ways that are hard to understand and hard to follow. Because of this, I find the standard answer of “young people don’t really care about privacy anyway” to be disingenuous.
The real problem is a cognitive and design disconnect between the level of privacy people expect and what is implemented.
With Beacon, this is the clearest case of this behavior I have come across to date.
Cathy,
Wow – great link. Thanks for pointing that out.
If you’ve got any early results/drafts you want to send me on that study, I’m always happy to read. JKD (1st commentor) and I are working on a privacy study that leverages work you’ve done – great stuff!
Great idea – its a plan. I am also looking at privacy as a boundary condition instead of the standard IT information privacy perspective. Will keep in touch about what I am finding.
btw — an interesting researcher on privacy boundaries is Sandra Petronio — she builds on Altman’s work.
Could VOIS.com become another Facebook?
Since the advent of social networking sites in 1997, the phenomenon has taken the world by storm. Once called a passing fad social networking is now a thriving business, in 2006, alone it garnered over $6.5 billion in revenue, while the three biggest players, connected over 280 million subscribers in a way never known before to society. This form of connection has drawn the globe closer together than anyone ever predicted.
Just a few years ago, MySpace.com, solely dominated the social networking site market with almost 80% of the social networking site market but now websites like Facebook entered the social networking site race becoming the 8th most viewed website in the U.S. according to web measuring traffic site Alexa.com. Facebook.com which originally started at Harvard University , later extended to Boston area schools and beyond has mystified many naysayer’s with its explosive growth over the last three years and an astounding asking price of $10-$15 billion dollars for the company. But who will be next?
Who will carry the torch into the future?
With the rapid growth of the likes of MySpace and Facebook the burning question on everyone’s tongue is who is next? As with any burgeoning field many newcomers will and go but only the strong and unique will survive. Already many in the field have stumbled, as indicated by their traffic rankings, including heavily funded Eons.com with its former Monster.com founder at the helm, Hooverspot.com and Boomj.com with its ridiculous Web 3.0 slogan. There are many possibilities but it is a dark horse coming fast into view and taking hold in the social networking site market at the global level that has us interested the website – Vois.com. Less than a year ago, this newest contender directed at 25 to 50 years olds graced the absolute bottom of the list with its website ranked at a dismal 5,000,000. With not so much as a squeak this rising star has come from the depths of anonymity growing an eye-popping 10,000% in less than one year to make itself known worldwide now sporting a recent web traffic ranking in the 5,000 range.
Understanding the Market
When people in the United States hear about Facebook and other services such as MySpace the widely held belief is that these websites are globally used and are as synonymous as Google or Yahoo in regards to having a global market presence. This idea is completely misguided. Now it is true that both of these social networking giants are geared to service the western industrialized cultures but when it comes to the markets of the future, the emerging markets, they have virtually no presence. The sites themselves are heavily Anglicized, and Facebook in particular has an extremely complicated web interface that eludes even those familiar with the language, making them virtually inaccessible in other parts of the world even where English is the main language.
Our interest in Vois is global and geopolitical. Simply, Vois understands this lack of market service and is building its provision model on a global research concept developed by Goldman Sachs a few years ago. The concept is basically predicated on the belief that beginning now using current economic models and continuing those models over the next few decades will lead to a major paradigm shift in the world regarding nations who are current economic leaders like those being the USA and the other members of the G-7 and those who will become dominant in the world economy mainly the BRICs. In the Goldman research report Goldman highlights the fastest growing nations and has dubbed them with the two acronyms BRIC’s and N-11. BRIC standing for ( Brazil, R ussia, India and China) representing the fastest growing economies and N-11 or what are being called the Next-11 representing the next 11 countries to emerge as future important economies such as Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Turkey and Vietnam. This approach has already been implemented with some success with companies like Orkut, who has over 80% of the market share in Brazil and large holdings in India and Eastern Europe . Other providers such as Hi5 have the world as their focus and are making great strides in global market share while Facebook builds itself into a niche provider wholly unready to take on the world.
A Growing Presence
As Vois breaks new ground in the world market pursuing previously ignored demographics, they afford themselves the opportunity of tremendous growth unfettered by the giants such as Facebook and MySpace. While cultivating this new user base, Vois will also be able to monopolize on their business revenue strategies, creating an area of commerce that will make their site increasingly attractive to business and users the world over. This concept, dubbed sCommerce, allows the subscriber to promote themselves in both personal and a professional fashion while giving them the option of setting up shop on the site. This approach will allow business owners to target their market in a way never before allowing them to focus on interested groups of individuals while providing follow-up without having to commit to wasteful blanket campaigns that are typically the order of the day. This newfound border will allow Vois to explore new revenue models while provide a tremendous service for both their regular subscribers and business subscribers alike. With all this going on, rapid traffic growth to the site, we pose the question – is Vois the next Facebook, it sure looks like it but only time will tell….