Facebook Beacon Aftershocks Causing Groundshift?
Published by Rodney Rumford November 29th, 2007 in Facebook, Facebook News.
Is Facebook considering changes to Beacon? According to Business Week; this is the case.
This does not surprise me in the least bit. As a person that is deeply involved in the facebook developer community; the one constant from facebook is change. It is common knowledge to developers (not most reporters or users) that almost every Tuesday new changes (enhancements) get rolled forward to the facebook platform.
This is because facebook is constantly evolving and trying to provide the best user experience. It is appropriate that facebook is located in earthquake country; the ground under your feet continually is shifting. Sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, mostly without warning.
Beacon was like a 9.0 shaker with aftershocks that just kept coming a few weeks after the first quake that shook everyone up.
Business Week is reporting that Facebook Execs are deep in talks amongst themselves on how to best move forward with Beacon.
Here is short excerpt of the Business Week Facebook Beacon article:
“In the wake of mounting criticism, Facebook executives are discussing changes to a controversial advertising tool that publicizes users’ Web activities outside of the popular social network. Alterations to the recently introduced Beacon system could be announced as early as Nov. 29, BusinessWeek.com has learned.”
“Executives of the three-year-old company were in deep talks over proposed changes late into the afternoon on Nov. 28, according to a person familiar with the matter. At issue is the Beacon program, which alerts members’ Facebook “friends” to purchases and other activities on third-party Web sites. A spokesperson for the company declined to discuss changes, reiterating an earlier statement: “Facebook is listening to feedback from its users and committed to evolving Beacon.”
As a side note; I was interviewed for KQED (NPR: 88.5 SF & Sacremento) Morning Edition on Wed. about Facebooks Beacon. The interview will run on Thursday morning while I am in the air flying back to Silicon Valley. 
Technorati Tags: facebook, facebook beacon
Deep talks?
Seems like a no brainer to fix, without pulling back totally.
Isn’t it enough to just have the default “opt out” instead of the current setting? That way users can opt-in just like they would any other application.
The downside is that there will be a very small % that opt-in, but that can be increased by giving added benefits to them.
Why, just yesterday Rodney said:
“This will most likely blow over in a short time and people will focus on important things; like what to buy for Christmas.”
What a difference a day makes?!