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Article

Title: Facebook in Privacy Uturn over Beacon

Author: Allison, Kevin Article Type: Product Analysis
Source: Financial Times, p8(1) Publication Date: Dec 2, 2007
URL of Publication: http://www.ft.com

Facebook had to, once again, make changes to a new technology after its users and privacy advocates cried foul. Its new Beacon advertising system was deemed intrusive by Facebooks 50 million users. It was designed to broadcast purchases made on outside websites to Facebook users friends. Initially, messages would publish automatically unless a user opted out to a publication request within a certain amount of time. The changes mean that users will now be asked to explicitly authorize the publication of each Beacon message and furthermore, users can opt out of the Beacon service altogether on a website by website basis. Beacon has been the most controversial of several new money-making technologies unveiled last month by Mark Zuckerman, Facebooks founder, and represents the holy grail of social networking--figuring out a way to cash in on all of the personal connections on social websites. Facebook faced a similar backlash last year when it launced Newsfeed, a technology that alerts friends to everything a user does on the site. However, Newsfeed turned out to become one of the sites most popular features after privacy controls were tightened.

Companies:
Facebook Inc

Products:
Facebook Beacon News Feed

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