Facebook Brings Back (Part of) Beacon, and No One Blinks [All Things D]
In a low-profile announcement earlier this week, Facebook announced a new ad platform that will take users’ actual likes, comments, and check-ins and turn them into “Sponsored Stories” or advertisements for the products and places mentioned.
Sponsored Stories are ads that companies can purchase that will show up to the right of a user's newsfeed and tell users when their friends like the company’s product, check-in at the company’s location, or comment on the company’s Facebook page.
Facebook has not provided an opt-out option for its users that aren't interested in Sponsored Stories, so if you click the "like" button for a particular company, it could end up as an ad on your friends' Facebook feed pages whether you’d like it to or not. Facebook has received criticism in the past for similar ad units that don’t include an opt-out, but so far this announcement has garnered less critical attention. That’s probably because liking something on Facebook or checking-in to a location is essentially advertising that place or business anyway. Facebook is monetizing these actions by having the companies pay for more targeted ads.
This isn’t Facebook’s first attempt at this type of advertising. Four years ago Facebook announced Beacon which, like Sponsored Stories, turned online activities into ads. In 2007, this idea was met with a significant uproar. Complaints flooded Facebook, the project was cancelled, and Mark Zuckerberg apologized.
We'll see if time will change the outcome this time around.
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