A new Internet service known as Beacon now works with Facebook to display some of your personal information for everyone to see online. For example, lets say you are a Facebook user and you purchase a sweater from an online retail site that has signed up for Beacon. With your permission, Facebook sends a note to your Facebook profile and it also appears, in some cases, in an area of your friends Facebook accounts known as news feed, which gives them updates on friends activities. Blockbuster, Overstock.com, and Fandango are among a few dozen participating websites. You do not receive a financial benefit from the transaction, except for the satisfaction of having yet another way to broadcast your every move to friends. The Beacon concept has not been widely applauded, however. The author ran a highly unscientific poll using a Facebook service that allows you to pay to ask questions of Facebook users. The author asked, If Facebook could tell your friends what you do on other sites--purchasing movie tickets, clothes, etc.--when would you want to share that information? Of the 200 respondents, only 1.5 percent selected always, 30.5 percent selected often, sometimes, or rarely, and 68 percent selected never. The author decided to attempt to Beacon himself, finding out that four clicks were necessary to prevent Facebook from sharing with his friends one of the purchases he made. The initial reaction of the authors friends to Beacon was definitely negative. Facebook users share for a reason. On the other hand, Beacon asks Facebook users to make ever more-invasive trades for an ever more-superficial sense of closeness. It is debatable whether that is worth it or not, but bear in mind that one definition for beacon is warning signal.