Facebook mounts Tupperware-style ads push

Facebook is bracing itself for a user backlash after it launched a bid to turn hype into profit, when it punted a trio of new advertiser features at New York marketeers overnight. The attack marks the first joined-up effort to make the cold, cold heart of web 2.0 start pumping cash. There are three prongs. First, companies …

[Rob]

Why?

"If you visit eBay via its sponsored Beacon application, for example, it would feed details of your activities back to Facebook, which would tell your friends about what you're selling via the newsfeed."

Why would I want to do that? I'm happy to rip joe public off by selling them some peice of tat, but I certainly wouldn't do it to my mates.

I feel sorry for the people that have filled in every detail of the personal info on Facebook, they will probably have a harder time getting away from this flak.

[Test Man]

Not a problem

Well this doesn't seem to be a problem for me.

Firstly - branded profiles - makes sense to me and it means businesses can make a profile more in tune for them instead of creating a normal one with their name in (which is really for individuals) or a Facebook group. Posts or additions by people to these "fans" profiles will be the same as it is now i.e. it'll appear on your profile and your friend's feeds so no change there.

Second - flogging access to profile information. Well, sounds a bit dodgy but lets face it, it was always going to happen.

Thirdly - beacon applications - sounds completely opt-in so no new privacy issues or dodginess here.

[Anonymous Coward]

what about a trusted 'they suck'?

Just as useful to the community, but perhaps not what the advertisers want. Still, the wall postings could be entertaining. Somehow I doubt they'll be uncensored for long.

[Steph]

Goodbye Facebook?

Facebook's all nice and everything - but indispensable, it isn't.

The lack of overt advertising was certainly an attraction and its appearance will be a major cooling factor for many, me included.

Time for Facebook to include a 'Securely wipe personal information' button in the account preferences?

[Andrew Kay]

Way out?

Do I need to stop using the bloody thing?

[Neil Charles]

Brilliant!

Comment number three on Coke's shiny new page...

"How can I find other product pages? I don't really like Coca Cola, I prefer Pepsi"

Do they have pre-approval on messages or can we get this page taken down in less than a day with some creative wall posting?

[Tom Chiverton]

Thank you AdBlock

Until Steph's comment I didn't realise FaceBonk had adverts ;-)

[Anonymous Coward]

They suit each other

Now corp bores like Coke can comminicate with people who like to tell others about there boring lives.. They suit each other.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Neil

Looks like a mission for somebodies personal army!

Anon

[Anonymous Coward]

Brilliant .....

...while they are busy with that perhaps they will leave the rest of us alone!!!

[Paul C. Hartley]

Sit back with a bowl of popcorn and enjoy...

"If you visit eBay via its sponsored Beacon application, for example, it would feed details of your activities back to Facebook"

Oh I am so looking forward to the headlines of the gaffs coming out of this one.

If you visit Victoria's Secret via its sponsored Beacon application will it tell facebook and all your friends via the newsfeed that you are wanking?

Will all males under the age of thirtyfive who visit victorias secret corporate profile then be sent targeted advertising for kleenex mansize tissues?

[Pete]

It's already there

Internal (non-banner) advertising has been in Facebook for ages. Two examples are Apple Students and Red Bull U; Apple Students was a bit tiresome with random messages to members' inboxes; sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly. Red Bull U is far more occasional, generally only doing the adverts for their far and wide zany days like the flugtag. Both were clearly associated with the companies, not just mockups by fans.

It's a status thing; like wearing a branded tshirt, though here you're not paying for giving sponsorship. When it gets invasive, it gets tiresome. Regular emails selling the same or near-similar things are a pain; behind-the-scenes ads that make sure that the banner ads that appear while browsing the site are relevant to your interests are good, because it's better than random banner ads that try to sell you things you're not even remotely interested in.

Those who Fear the (info)Reaper will just leave their Interests blank, or whichever other fields the information is harvested from. It's easy to freeload by providing minimal information, or unverifiable information. It's easy to adblock. Changing the mechanism so it's displayed as a userbox-type thing is utterly ignorable, since it'll most likely be swamped under the poo flinging and aquaria and werewolf statistics. News feed settings can be changed to ignore these things.

While I don't agree with some of the changes Facebook make, I'm also not paranoid that they're stealing my information and using it for dastardly purposes, because I just don't provide that information. Perhaps they'll flag me as a poor user in some later silver-gold-platinum-diamond feature doodad, but for now it simply has no effect.

[Dan Wood]

Irony... I started a facebook group to complain!

All you facebookerinos feel free to join my group - and whinge 'til your heart's content:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5698516682

[Andrew Heenan]

There's Two Objections to Ads ...

... Principle & Practice.

Those who object on principle will kick up a stink, and if it appears big enough (as if!), then some kind of 'opt out' may appear.

What is more likely is that the 'practice' of heavy-handed ad insertion will do long term damage, loosening loyalty, speeding up the inevitable moment that some new, even kewler [sic] site takes the lead.

Once M$ got their foot in the door, subtlety went out the window; watch NBC's alternative to youtube fail for the same reason; the Suit Corporations are not capable of resisting the 'we want MORE money, and we want it NOW' types in the Ad sales department.

Suit Corporations ALWAYS kill the Golden Goose, and NEVER learn their error.

[Brett]

hmm perhaps big corperates will realsie

that they need to pay people for us to care about them. For small buisness and local shops this will be a boon. Depends on how they do the pricing.

Anyway facebook is on my spam list so I don't care.

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm I wonder

I use a rather nifty, all powerful util called admucher its on a life time licence cost me a few quid but not many and i honestly cant remember seeing an advert in the last 5 years. They arent a big company so i don't feel bad about mentioning them like say if it was a M$ product (EL REG if this post breaches some advertising thing then just replace the product name with some ******** or something)

I look forward to seeing if Facebook can post adverts admucher cant munch and if they cant be munched i wonder how long it will take for admucher to catch up, few days at most.

Pfffft advertising, if i don't want to see it i dont. As for the profile scanning i think it'll just be a simple matter of not having much of anything in it which people shouldn't already for privacy / identity theft issues. Ill also be looking out for this Beacon thing and opting out and i assume it will be some form of tracking cookie related doodah and cookies aren't hard to remove

[Roger Heathcote]

No ads = no free stuff.

A few ads is a fair price to pay for things like unlimited free photo storage surely?

I have to say I have never been disturbed by the ocasional ads dropped into my newsfeeds, nor the 'flyers' you get down the side, infact I've just purchased some for my website & was glad of the (rudimentary but useful) ability to target them on age/sex/location. I look forward to the newer metrics coming onstream, if anything these are more useful to a small business person like me than to international brands like coke :-)

Maybe those who object to facebook adverts full stop should have the option of PAYING SOME CASH for an ad free version? Me, I'd rather have companies I hate (like mcdonalds and cocacola) pay for it ;-) These companies, whilst excited by buzzwords like 'viral' really don't understand this stuff yet (as the coke quote above shows) so we get to happily sit here playing pirates and poke'ing our friends while they take years to figure out they're pissing their money down the drain. I ask you who's really losing out here?

As goes the information sharing I really don't care if advertisers know that I regularly cycle & my favourite food is trifle, over a million people in the London network can find this out easily, if I didn't want people to know this I wouldn't put it in my profile would I?