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November 8, 2007

Updated: Facebook ad network: Friend spam; May be illegal

Later: Saul Hansell at the Times' Bits Blog asks, Are Facebook’s Social Ads Illegal?

It may be illegal under a 100-year-old New York privacy law. The statute says that “any person whose name, portrait, picture, or voice is used within this state for advertising purposes or for the purposes of trade without the written consent first obtained” can sue for damages. Moreover, such a use is also a criminal misdemeanor.

More at that link.

Earlier: The Times (Facebook Is Marketing Your Brand Preferences (With Your Permission)):

Yesterday, in a twist on word-of-mouth marketing, Facebook began selling ads that display people’s profile photos next to commercial messages that are shown to their friends about items they purchased or registered an opinion about.

For example, going forward, a Facebook user who rents a movie on Blockbuster.com will be asked if he would like to have his movie choice broadcast out to all his friends on Facebook. And those friends would have no choice but to receive that movie message, along with an ad from Blockbuster.

Ever have a friend get a sales job and start trying to sell you insurance? Yeah, like that. But it seems everybody makes money except the Facebook user spamming his or her friends.

Kyle Sutton at PC World (Facebook Puts Users to Work Pitching Products) also asks about that:

I'm also curious why there isn't more in this for Facebook users. If I'm promoting products, driving traffic to commercial Web sites, and potentially inspiring sales - where is my cut? After all, there are loads of affiliate advertising programs that pay you money for driving traffic to a commercial site. Amazon's Associate program is a good example.

Perhaps that would risk turning Facebook into a race to recommend, like those comment spams I get that contain only the word "Sorry."

Dave Rosenberg at CNet (Facebook decides to bastardize its community) gets at how warped this could be:

I already feel paranoid and exposed as a blogger, but the idea that my casual and personal details and conversations can end up as advertising dollars is freaky and unnerving. I also don't want to know if some kid I went to middle school with is buying a boat or adult diapers on Amazon.

That last link goes to ValleyWag (Your Privacy Is An Illusion: Facebook to stalk you while you shop),

AdAge reports that part of its new SocialAds will track buying activity on websites, and report to Facebook users' friends what they're buying. Creepy -- but lucrative, since Amazon.com shares a cut of purchases with sites that refer buyers. And Amazon.com and Facebook have already teamed up to let users share book reviews.

This could be unintentionally funny. Your Christmas gifts could be revealed to their intended recipients by the store you bought them from. And, when it comes to recommending items I might like, Amazon is working from my Christmas gift list for people who are not like me. It remembers the 8-year-old boy on my list two years ago, and still clumsily offers me items for 8-year-olds. We've moved on.

Seriously, do I seem like someone who wants Fairies: Petal People You Make Yourself? Does he?

Doc Searls, who shares my uneasiness about walled sites such as Facebook that break the Web, serves up (Facebook doesn’t need to be Adbook),

In the long run there’s a lot more money to be made helping demand find supply than in just in helping supply find demand.

Then he quotes Nick Carr (The social graft) on Facebook's new philosophy: "There is no intimacy that is not a branding opportunity, no friendship that can’t be monetized, no kiss that doesn’t carry an exchange of value."

Back to the Times:

Facebook says that many of its 50 million active users already tell friends about particular products or brands they like, and the only change will be that those communications might start to carry ad messages from the companies that sell them. Facebook is letting advertisers set up their own profile pages at no charge and encouraging companies like Blockbuster, Condé Nast and Coca-Cola to share information with Facebook about the actions of Facebook members on their sites.

Maybe this overreaching will be the real "Facebook killer."

Once you sign up, you can't delete yourself from Facebook, ever, but that doesn't mean these profiles won't become tombstones in an abandoned ghost network that monetized its users right out the door.

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 12:12 PM | Permalink