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Startup The Show: #2 Facebook

December 5, 2007 | by Andrew Hyde

The Facebook Beacon story seems to be everywhere now, so todays episode is dedicated to just that.

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Links for the show:

02138’s article on Facebook.

Zuckerberg NewsFeed Apology: An Open Letter from Mark Zuckerberg:

Zuckerberg Becon Apology: Thoughts on Beacon

50M Facebook users don’t care about OpenSocial APIs

Official Beacon Page: (as of 12/5/07)

User privacy is extremely important to Facebook. We designed Facebook Beacon to enable effortless sharing, but we’ve also put in features to protect user privacy. When you send an action to Facebook, the user is immediately alerted of the story you wish to publish and will be alerted again when they sign into Facebook. The user must proactively consent to have a story from your website published.

Popularity: 12% [?]

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    Great first show guys! Looking forward to future episodes.

    IMO the opt-out launch was intentional. Gotta get that data for the advertisers. ;)
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    Re: what counts, the user or the valuation: It's ALL about the valuation, y'all. The users are simply a means to an end from the investors' point of view (IMO). The Beacon faux pas was probably due to them only seeing that "guaranteed" revenue from the affiliates and having a totally deaf ear to what the consumers might think. I've seen this happen. People in corporations, where there is totally top-down mgmnt, can convince themselves of anything if there are $$ involved. It's particularly disturbing in this case because Web 2.0 is supposed to be all about corporations listening to users, having a conversation, as opposed to the usual output-only, "control the message" mindset. I can practically hear them sitting around the conference table "yessing" each other about how users are going to love Beacon.
    Zuckerman's "apology" notwithstanding, I think the last thing on anyone's mind when coming up with Beacon was "helping users share". It was all about revenue sharing from the git go. The "helping the users" part was a self-serving rationalization. All of this IMHO, naturally.
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    Hey Andrew, looking forward to listening. Do you have an RSS feed for the show yet?
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    Hey - Looking forward to listening to more of these shows.

    I believe that Beacon is a good feature, I agree that the way it was launched isn't how it will ultimately exist (but what service doesn't change significantly after it launches?).

    I'm a little bummed that we've raked Facebook over the coals on this one - As much as I dislike some things about Facebook, you can't argue that they have excellent execution and have inspired a lot of innovation in the space. I think that will slow down at a rate equal to the attacks on their new products.

    I personally wrote an email extolling the things I did and didn't like about Beacon. Many Bloggers posted their thoughts on it as well, but the digital lynch mobs moved a little quickly in my opinion.

    Cheers,
    Tyler
 
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