With Facebook making changes to its Beacon program, users will see a new set of options every time they interact with a “Beacon Affiliate”. This is what you’ll see:
Notification
Facebook users will see a notification in the lower right corner of the screen after transacting with a Beacon Affiliate. Options include “No Thanks” that will immediately stop the transaction from being published. Alternatively closing or ignoring the warning won’t immediately publish the story, but it will be put in a queue
Second Warning
Presuming you’ve ignored or closed the first notification, Facebook warns users again the next time they visit their home page. A new box reminds you that an activity has been sent to Facebook. Like the first notification you can choose to not publish the activity by hitting remove, or you can choose to publish it by hitting ok.
Per the original statement from Facebook at this stage, presuming you’ve ignored the warnings and not selected to publish the activity or told Facebook no, it won’t be published. Here’s the kicker though: they’ll keep annoying you until you finally make a decision:
If a user does nothing with the initial notification on Facebook, it will hide after some duration without a story being published. When a user takes a future action on a Beacon site, it will reappear and display all the potential stories along with the opportunity to click “OK” to publish or click “remove” to not publish.
But there is hope should you not wish to have your Facebook experience consumed by messages asking you to publish or not publish an activity, you can opt out permanently
Opt Out
Found via the “External Websites” section of the Facebook Privacy page, this allows users to permanently opt in or out of Beacon notifications, or if you’re not sure be notified. The downside is that there is no global option to opt out of every Beacon affiliated program; it has to be set per program. Better this than nothing I suppose.
Update: second screen shot is updated. Thanks to Facebook for the more up to date shot.
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fail
Facebook needs to introduce a subversive application so that advertisers can send marketing materials even if the facebook person opts out.
I mean, for God’s sake. How can America survive with advertising.
I tried to use subliminal messaging in my latest ads with facebook but no such luck.
I hate to admit to you all, I really want to make a lot of money and am sick of the “not buying power” on facebook.
Don’t these kids get allowances?
Boy! Techcrunch loves writing about Facebook and PayPerPost. Sometimes I think the site would fall over in excitement if those two companies ever got together to form some sort of unholy, inethical social blogging partnership.
Thankfully that’s highly unlikely to happen
Oh, I don’t know. The fact that it disappears makes one believe that Facebook actually stops itself from annoying you until you make another transaction. I think that’s a shade better than *always* occupying your attention (like yet another invite to participate in a Facebook App).
users won’t mind sharing the clothes they just bought. so maybe give more options like show only clothing, cds, or electronic items.
Does anyone here got massive telemarketing phone calls from Facebook. They sell your info to third party.
Excellent post. Thanks Dunkan.
Hey I thought Facebook was doing Michael. Duncan, how low did you have to bend?
I wonder how much Beacon user info Microsoft will get for their $240 million investment?
RE: “there is no global option to opt out of every Beacon affiliated program; it has to be set per program”: The drumbeat won’t stop until there IS a global opt out. The more they resist, the louder the drumbeat goes and the more negativity accrues to the Facebook brand. They are only postponing the inevitable and hurting themselves in the process. You can’t stop the beat, Facebook!
The Microsoft partnership yeilds fruit quickly!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com/
This was all more a shot across the bow of the other social nets than it was an affront to the users. It was always going to be scaled back.
That second screenshot is outdated (it’s from this morning). It says in light gray underneath the title “Stories are published in two days unless you respond.” That’s now not the case (stories are never published until you respond with “Okay”).
Luigi
sorry, what we had, but you are correct as I noted in the text, it’s never published unless you ultimately approve it to be published.
Is it that Facebook will modify, not spike Beacon ads??? Confusing though…Well its looking like Facebook is up for making some serious changes..Finally, if users fail to approve or decline the Facebook alert on the partner site, Facebook will no longer assume the user is agreeing by omission. Instead, they will offer another, more visible opportunity to opt-out to users on Facebook itself. If no action is taken within two days, Facebook will assume the user complies and will publish the action in the news feed.
Are they trying to catch users off guard??? Or they jst trying an explicit way to know what has happened and for them to publish.
Parul
http://www.bhopu.com
Wow. I still can’t people are complaining that Facebook Beacon “annoys them” until they make a decision. How about you make a decision then?
Like uh, “No, don’t send this to my profile.”
If you can’t make up your mind, you deserve to be annoyed. If you don’t want it published to your feed, tell them so. How hard is that?
If you still don’t like it… disable your friggin Facebook account. If all you horn blowers really want to make a difference, then deactivate your account. Otherwise, there is no news here. Move along please.
Use Firefox and download the “Block Site” add on [both are free]
Enter this url into the Block Site add on: facebook.com/beacon/*
with the customary http section first
This will permanently block the beacon from every functioning, anywhere.
keep rockin it Mozilla dev community
—–>
That first pop-up toast notification on partners’ Websites was always there, at least for some partners like Epicurious. I’ve seen those before. It is the second notification on Facebook itself and the opt-out option that is new.
@16, I couldn’t agree more. As a “customer,” I’m not happy with Beacon, and if I find it irritating enough, I will quit using Facebook.
But those like chrisco @10 need to quit whining and take responsibility as a consumer. You didn’t seriously think that Facebook was some charitable initiative designed to help you keep in touch with your friends in an extremely casual manner, did you? You entered your personal information, accepted cookies, and gave FB permission to use them.
It’s a product, not a right; and nobody’s forcing you to use it.
I think this is the right step by Facebook but I can’t see how Beacon will turn out to be a great way to monetize the site.
Facebook should probably keep experimenting with as many ways to generate revenue.
Clearly this wont bring in much revenue for Facebook (IMHO).
-Augustus
Facebook, totally willing to sell your privacy to others. This is so annoying. Thanks for the firefox tip charles!
This is awesome! I also wanted software that would track all of my online activity and publish it to the world and, even better, make it available to adertisers and marketers. All I can say is- thank you Facebook!
I expect to see my TechCrunch blog-post comment posted to my FB profile and in my friend’s newsfeed in 3…2….1
Facebook will be forced to allow global opt-out as users continue showing anger over invasion of their privacy