Written by guest writer Foley
3 words. Pandemic. Mullet. Beacon.
You’ll probably never see those 3 words in the same sentence, paragraph, or even book. Well, it is in one book - Facebook. Rumor has it those three words are codewords for Facebook’s newest money making scheme.
Facebook has a fairly diverse range of revenue stream, ranging from flyers, virtual gifts, polls, sponsored groups, negotiating an inflated valuation for investment money, etc… To add to the growing list is screwing Facebook application developers and stripping users of more privacy. How so? Here’s what the rumored code projects are.
Pandemic: Removing sponsored groups pages on Facebook.
Mullet: Replacing the sponsored groups page with more a more interactive page consisting of games and applications.
Beacon: Following a Facebook user’s footprint across the web in order to collect more information and serve more relevant ads.
There are over 5,000 Facebook applications. 87% of the usage come from 84 of the applications. The other 4,916 applications were guinea pigs for Facebook. Now knowing what applications interest users, Facebook can recreate the applications, charge companies to sponsor them, channel Facebook users to the application, and profit. The original creative brains behind the application are left to rot and pay off the debt incurred from hosting the Facebook applications. Of course, they can always create something for OpenSocial.
Though what Facebook could do to the application developers is disturbing, what frightens me more is Beacon. The concept is not new - cookie tracking. However, with the private data Facebook already has with their users, they can potential link the movies you list under “Favorite Movies” and run ads for those genres whenever you visit Amazon.com.
To make users feel there is a social benefit, if you purchase a movie at Amazon.com, you can publish it on your newsfeed. Of course, Amazon.com is happy because it is free advertising for them. Facebook is happy, because they’ll get a cut from the click. You’re happy, because the person you’ve been meaning to ask out saw that you purchased their favorite movie, and invited themselves over to watch it with you. You hope that everything you’ve done together through the “X Me” application will be done in real life.
As euphoric as that scenario sounds, there is another side to the coin. Say, a short time later your date wants to “X Me” (use your imagination). You go online and purchase more items from Amazon: A case of 1000 condoms, whip, or other unmentionables. Well, I think you get the point.
Whoops! You forgot to opt out and your purchases get sent to your news feed. Depending on your circle of friends, your friends list will either quadruple the next day, it go down to 0. Most likely though, it will fall somewhere between 0, and 0. Yes, even your mother removed you as a friend. Facebook as an entity, who not only much of your information, but also the ability to distribute it to your friends, has a large responsibility to protect its users. With Facebook set to go IPO sometime in the near future, their first responsibility will soon shift to their stock holders.
What Google and DoubleClick does with cookie tracking has been under a lot of scrutiny, but now when combined with the social aspect of Facebook as well as the evil aurora that surrounds Microsoft, it does not paint a pretty picture. Facebook will try to convince everyone the data will be private - but the recent leak of Facebook employees monitoring the profiles you view, we all know that the system can and will be abused.
Like always, only a minority of the Facebook user will realize what is going on. But when something goes astray it will be too late.
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