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Posts Tagged “

Beacon, Facebook

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friendfeed

Why Silicon Valley just won't shut up about FriendFeed

"Cathy Brooks is a typically unapologetic Silicon Valley Web addict," writes Brad Stone in the New York Times. "Last week alone, she produced more than 40 pithy updates on the text messaging service Twitter, uploaded two dozen videos to various video sharing sites, posted seven photographs on the Yahoo image service Flickr and one item to the online community calendar Upcoming." Usually, when one identifies a friend as an addict, an intervention is in order. But Stone, who seems to have spent so much time in San Francisco's tech circles that he's gone native, suggests more technology instead: Specifically, FriendFeed, which gathers all of this online activity in one place, making it marginally easier for Brooks's benighted friends to keep up with her online logorrhea. More »

Feature

9:20 AM on Mon May 5 2008
By Owen Thomas
2,916 views, 11 comments

Latest by Figaro: Friendfeed is for people on ADD/ADHD. Even if you have few friends, the amount of useless data that it gives you is enormous! Stay clear of that tool! It's just an RSS reader with a "social" feel to it. more »

online advertising

Facebook dumping $100,000/mo. Sponsored Groups for Pages

It's hard to count the ways Mark Zuckerberg botched the launch of Facebook's "Social Ads" last fall. From the portentous talk of a once-every-100-years "change" in media, to the privacy brouhaha over Facebook's Beacon technology, Facebook's inexperienced CEO did just about everything wrong. At last, he's starting to get things right. Facebook has begun encouraging advertisers with sponsored groups to shift to Facebook Pages instead. Apple, with the largest sponsored group, has moved 400,000 members of its Apple Students group to be "fans" of the Apple Facebook page instead. It's a big, risky, and potentially costly change. More »

12:40 PM on Fri May 2 2008
By Owen Thomas
1,186 views, 2 comments

Latest by Avery: This is the death of Facebook right here. They no longer have a business model. more »

clips

Charlie Rose on Charlie Rose on the Internet, by Samuel Beckett

Over the years, Charlie Rose has hosted Silicon Valley titans like Wired editor Chris Anderson, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, and Google cofounder Sergey Brin on his late-night public television interview show. When Facebook launched its Beacon advertising program in New York, Rose played master of ceremonies. But not until now, with the discovery of this clip titled "'Charlie Rose' by Samuel Beckett," has Rose effectively explicated the industry. More »

1:00 PM on Mon Apr 21 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
1,426 views, 10 comments

online advertising

Facebook can't get basic ad targeting right

Facebook has great features for users, but is having a hard time selling ads. The Beacon program attempts to get agreements from companies to pay Facebook in return for broadcasting purchasing information to friends as an indirect endorsement of the brand. Users revolted, and now Blockbuster, not Facebook, is getting sued for giving up a customer's data — not exactly an incentive for advertisers to sign up with the company's next "revolutionary" scheme. Meanwhile, Facebook can't even get the most basic demographic targeting right. Boinkology points to the case of Peter Knox who, while listed as "straight" in the Facebook database, can't seem to get away from come ons to talk to hot, gay men. Either Facebook's ad-placement algorithms are so good they can even pick up on latent homosexuality, or the company can't even run a basic query against user-selected preference in order to target ads.

2:40 PM on Thu Apr 17 2008
By Jackson West
1,496 views, 13 comments

Latest by suckaduck: I'm Peter Knox, by the way, and I can't figure this out. My other friends, straight males on Facebook, don't seem to get these ads, but I do. And after scanning my profile and information, even my online habits, I can't more »

facebook

Beacon a business failure, too

Is it advertising if no one pays for it? In its rush to criticize Facebook's Beacon in last night's segment on the hot social network, 60 Minutes forgot to ask that question. In dramatic tones, correspondent Lesley Stahl ominously noted how "advertisers pulled out" after controversy erupted over the feature, which reports on users' online activities, including purchases. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended it to Stahl as the future of advertising, a form of sponsorship less crass than banner ads. If it's the future of advertising, though, it's not a very lucrative one. More »

11:34 AM on Mon Jan 14 2008
By Owen Thomas
1,575 views, 13 comments

Latest by Dror Poleg: @SAMPLE032: Well, I ain't heard nothing, just judging by what I see. Anyways, when are we going to be worth 4b? more »

great moments in journalism

Mark Zuckerberg gets off scot free in "60 Minutes" interview

No one expects the fannish inquisition. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg can breathe easy; he has nothing to fear from 60 Minutes after all. From the looks of the teaser CBS News is running for his upcoming interview, the hardest question Zuckerberg got asked was if he got in trouble at Harvard for launching Facemash, a predecessor of Facebook built from photos he hacked out of school servers. The venerable news organization even got his net worth wrong — he owns 27 percent of Facebook, making him worth $4 billion on paper, not $3 billion. So much for factchecking. Here are the questions we wish CBS's Lesley Stahl had asked — but doubt she bothered: More »

9:57 AM on Fri Jan 11 2008
By Owen Thomas
3,349 views, 9 comments

Latest by ABloggingHorse: Again, his percieved worth is what is on paper. If Facebook fails, his net worth won't be a whole lot. more »

your privacy is an illusion

Find Facebook ads creepy? I do!

Yes, Facebook, I am getting married. I presume you know this because my fiancée and I are listed as engaged to each other in our profiles. It's even possible you know the wedding is soon because she registered us on TheKnot.com, a Beacon partner. And even though she opted not to have you spam our friends about it, it's conceivable that you're still keeping track of her activity on the site, despite promising to discard the data. That's fine. Eventually we were going to tell you about the wedding anyway. But, Facebook, you might want to know: I'm not an American Express cardholder. And also: I'm not going to buy that dress. Oh, and one more thing? More »

12:40 PM on Thu Dec 27 2007
By Nicholas Carlson
1,496 views, 5 comments

Latest by l.ementary: I just found this. My question for Facebook: Why am I being aggressively targeted with ads offering to let me have the late Heath Ledger leave me voice messages as the Joker? I'm sure it started innocently enough because I more »

Top 5 FAILs of 2007 They were going to CHANGE EVERYTHING. Whoops. presenting five biggest technology disappointments of the past year. No, not Vista and the Kindle — you didn't expect anything there.

9 comments

FTC seeks to bore online advertisers with proposals Following its approval of the Google-DoubleClick merger, the FTC put out a series of proposals regarding privacy and online advertising. Dear God they're boring. But relevant nonetheless. Here are the bullet points.

Comment

great moments in journalism

Fortune's Facebook infomercial


Before Fortune magazine's little dustup about Facebook's controversial new advertising products, Andy Serwer's court jester, David Kirkpatrick, produced a hardly hard-hitting video on the subject. Just how much of a puff piece was this? Fortune managed to dig up some intercutting shots of a very enthusiastic Facebook user. Recognize her? More »

7:52 AM on Thu Dec 20 2007
By Nicholas Carlson
731 views, Comment

porn

Facebook gets ad booty, booty ads

Advertisers have forgiven Facebook for Beacongate, Mediaweek reports. Despite the ill-thought-out introduction of Facebook's privacy-invading ads, they plan to keep their money flowing. Most even appreciate how with Beacon, Facebook tried something new and uproven. But more and more, readers are finding very proven methods of advertising all over Facebook. Sex sells, and despite rules against porn ads, Facebook's ad-review staff can't seem to keep up with the softcore stuff flooding the site. Frankly, we're disgusted amused. Here's the latest example. With apologies to Fark, we must note it's NSFW. More »

12:30 PM on Tue Dec 11 2007
By Nicholas Carlson
3,558 views, 4 comments

Latest by n/a: come on guys, this is a $15,000,000,000 business. Of course you probably won't understand its innerworkings well at all. However, none of us really do. Pity. more »

facebook

"The Internet is the new leaving the tape in the VCR"


This clip about Facebook's controversial Beacon ads from the MTV-wannabe Fuse network doesn't tell you much new — but there's a great line at the end. The fact that it's become news on music-video channels tells you this: The bad buzz about Beacon has traveled much, much farther than the actual ads have.

5:04 AM on Mon Dec 10 2007
By Owen Thomas
1,107 views, 1 comment

marcel laverdet

Facebook employee gleefully broadcasts purchases

Why has Facebook gotten into so much trouble over Beacon, its online-advertising program which alerts friends to your online purchases and other Web activity? Until CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized, its response was largely tone-deaf. And that, we suspect, is because its youthful, well-paid employees don't see what the big deal is about telling everyone what you've bought. More »

12:45 PM on Fri Dec 7 2007
By Owen Thomas
12,348 views, 12 comments

silicon valley users guide

How to turn off Facebook's Grinch

You've heard the horror stories about how Facebook's Beacon ads can ruin your Christmas. Even though Overstock.com — the online retailer whose use of Beacon caused most of the uproar — has turned Beacon off, there's no telling who Zuckerberg might sucker into installing the ads next. Take action now. Use Facebook's new privacy options to turn it off. Here's the simple four-click process. More »

10:40 AM on Thu Dec 6 2007
By Nicholas Carlson
2,101 views, 4 comments

facebook

Mark Zuckerberg issues the inevitable apology

Mark Zuckerberg has apologized for the fiasco over Beacon, Facebook's controversial advertising system which reports users' activities across the Web to their friends. It turns out that, all these years later, he still values the trust of Facebook users. Of course, he has to remind us that trust is Facebook's highest regard every time he oversteps that trust. Maybe someone should remind the youthful CEO of his own views before he introduces a new feature which breaks that trust. More »

10:53 AM on Wed Dec 5 2007
By Tim Faulkner
1,745 views, 9 comments

Latest by Oh No I Di'n't.: How the hell CAN'T he see these things coming? I mean, he's the same age as his target demographic. Really, it's not that hard to be like, "Hey, my friends probably would hate this". Does he ever talk to other more »

facebook

Beacon protests a hundred times smaller than News Feed uproar

Maybe Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has so far declined to talk to Robert Scoble — real, fake, or otherwise — and other bloggers for a simple reason. He knows the vast majority of Facebook users, still mostly high school and college kids, don't know and don't care about Facebook Beacon. That's what the above poll indicates. It's not the only evidence. More »

10:43 AM on Wed Dec 5 2007
By Nicholas Carlson
1,301 views, 6 comments

facebook

Zuckerberg: Value of users' trust is immeasurable

Mark Zuckerberg in his own words:
It's hard to quantify that because this isn't a short-term thing. If an event [like] this happens and our users get spammed then they trust the site less and they use it less, then that could affect us tremendously down the line, even if it doesn't affect it right at this point.
No, that's not the Facebook founder's mea culpa on the much-derided Beacon advertising program. It's Zuckerberg's deposition account of rival network ConnectU's attempts to harvest emails from Facebook profiles. But Zuckerberg's claim that the impact of losing user trust is "immeasurable" is just as apropos today as it was three years ago.

7:26 AM on Wed Dec 5 2007
By Tim Faulkner
463 views, 6 comments

Latest by ScalaWag: @sample032: LOL. That was his biggest mistake. He should have just done as told and sell to Friendster for $1M on a good day. @Figaro: That is why they are a private company. Listening to too many well-wishers is worse than more »

online advertising

Facebook not so sure users have even heard of Beacon

Add this to the garbage in my Facebook news feed: I logged in this morning to find a "sponsored poll" about the Beacon advertising program. The poll didn't say who sponsored it, but I suspect it was Facebook itself. Freaked out by the reaction to Beacon ads, which report purchases and other actions taken on other websites to your Facebook friends, Facebook is trying to find its way through the fiasco. (Ryann from Facebook customer support writes to say, "Polls can be purchased by third parties, and we cannot give away any information on who purchased the poll. I apologize for any inconvenience that may cause.") More »

3:20 PM on Tue Dec 4 2007
By Mary Jane Irwin
1,126 views, 7 comments

Latest by Trackback: There's no question that Facebook's Beacon initiative has taken a beating over the past few weeks. The feature automatically collected and published users' activities at partner sites, and almost immediately attracted criticism. MoveOn launched a campaign in opposition more »

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