Facebook Apologizes for Beacon
The New York Times has an article on their Bits blog about Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook apologizing for their Beacon program and now allowing users to opt-out completely instead of having to opt-out on a per site basis. This is a nice gesture, but I feel that Beacon should have been an opt-in program from the beginning.
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Yes, he apologized - many weeks into the program and long after he should have. My guess is that he waited for his attorneys and PR staff to vet his written apology.
He also failed to address one of the major criticisms of the program. Yes, you can opt out of the Beacon but is the data still shared with Facebook and the advertisers? We don’t know because Mark didn’t say.
In light of the (over)valuation of the company and the financial pressure Zuckerberg and his team are under, you can be darned sure that data is still flowing. Your friends may not know that you bought something at Overstock.com but Facebook and Overstock do.
I see his apology was a PR stunt. Nothing more.
In a business that relies on the participation of people, not technology or innovation, Zuckerberg is quickly proving he doesn’t understand his own business.
He either needs to turn around and put people at the front of his business model or get out of the social space.
I’m no fan of Steve Balmer’s rants but he said it best — “There can’t be any more deep technology in Facebook than what dozens of people could write in a couple of years. That’s for sure.”