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Today's Top News
Facebook Backs Down After Members Revolt
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, issued a public apology to the social networking site's users yesterday and promised that they could switch off a controversial advertising feature that tracked their movements on the internet.
The Beacon feature launched last month automatically shared information about what books, music, tickets and gifts users were buying on outside websites, but Facebook has been scrambling to quell a growing revolt among its 55 million members.
A U-turn last week, which gave users more control over what information was being shared, failed to mollify critics and yesterday Mr Zuckerberg said he would allow users to disable Beacon entirely.
"We've made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we've made even more with how we've handled them," he wrote on the company's blog. "We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologise for it... I'm not proud of the way we've handled this situation and I know we can do better."
Almost 70,000 people signed up to a Facebook group demanding that the company stop what they described as an invasion of privacy, while the left-leaning political campaign group MoveOn. org organised an online petition. The controversy had threatened to damage the credibility of Facebook, which gained much of its popularity because of the strict privacy rules that set it apart from rival social networking sites.
However, the climbdown could also be damaging. Beacon was meant to be an important money-spinner for the company, allowing it to take a fee from the e-commerce websites such as Amazon which would be name-checked when their products were purchased by Facebook users.
The company is on course to make a profit of just $30m this year but giddy expectations of future profits have pushed its valuation to $15bn.
Beacon was launched as part of a package of revenue-generating plans a month ago.
© 2007 The Independent
6 Comments so far
Show All"Almost 70,000 people signed up to a Facebook group demanding that the company stop what they described as an invasion of privacy, while the left-leaning political campaign group MoveOn. org organised an online petition. The controversy had threatened to damage the credibility of Facebook, which gained much of its popularity because of the strict privacy rules that set it apart from rival social networking sites."
Privacy: Zuckerberg unclear on the concept.
It's funny. Two days ago I was considering writing a blog post about why I won't be joining Facebook, MySpace, or any other social networking site. This news makes my post moot. The article was going to talk about, how these companies are going to use and misuse your psycographic information to market the hell out of you, and who knows where your info ends up.
To me it made as much sense as paying $30 to buy a Nike hat, with the company logo on it, in essence paying the company to market their brand. The greatest marketing ploy ever.
This whole social networking phenomenon is a scary scam. Why the hell do people think these companies are worth billions? I have a degree and career in marketing, but even without one, it's easy to figure out. Their only value is in their ability to collect information on you and sell it to marketers.
Everyone thought this was just for fun? Well, coming from a nation that gave up it's constitution, it shouldn't be surprising.
Ramsay
I wonder when these Orwellian big brother freaks are going to figure out how to reach through a phone line (or cable connection) and just take your wallet out of your pocket, stick a sock in your mouth, or just shoot you for disagreeing with the 'company line'.
Charming. The problem was with how they handled it, not with the feature itself - if only they had marketed it right to their users! A fake apology, along the lines of "I'm sorry you feel insulted that you're a moron."
Thats too bad beacon is gone i wanted the powers that be to be able to see what i do.That way they know exactly how i feel about their sorry asses.F*ck 'em all.
Paul M describes the entire Bush/Cheney era. It isn't that the policies are idiotic, or worse; the problem, they believe, is that the sales pitch wasn't quite right.