FACEBOOK

The upswell of concern relating to
Facebook’s Beacon advertising program,
including a campaign from Moveon.org may have been successful ,with BusinessWeek reporting that Facebook discussed changes to the program as recently as the 29th of Novemeber
Facebook executives are said to “deep talks over proposed changes late into the afternoon on Nov. 28.”
Despite its possible lack of concern to the wider community, Facebook’s Beacon program has become a major issue in the tech community, many users are voting strongly in concern over Facebook’s current practices.
Moveon has previously reported that the ability to opt-out of the program was available in early tests of the program, but strangely dropped when it was fully released. Facebook indicated earlier this week that it was “listening to feedback from its users and committed to evolving Beacon so users have even more control over the actions shared from participating sites with their friends on Facebook,” so the BusinessWeek story would seem likely to be true.
What form these changes will take is yet to be disclosed, but more importantly it will be interesting to see whether the changes go far enough to appease the growing chorus of anti-Facebook rhetoric.
When news hit last week that Facebook was publishing user information gathered from third party sites (like ecommerce purchases) and publishing in the news feed, the assumption was it would quickly blow over. Facebook is continuously pushing the envelope with new features, and there always seems to be short term backlash when they try something new.
But it isn’t clear that the new Beacon controversy is going to blow over so easily. First, MoveOn.org has made this their Cause Du Jour and seems hell bent on forcing Facebook to change its policies.
Rumors surfaced that Facebook was censoring search results that included the MoveOn.org privacy group (flatly denied, privately, by Facebook).
However, Facebook already has made changes to ensure that no information is shared unless a user receives notifications both on a participating website and on Facebook.
It would be in Facebook’s best interest to make the new Beacon service opt-in only. But that reduces the value of the service to third parties who supply the information to Facebook, and get free links in return.
Watch this space!