Finally heeding calls to apologize for the privacy disaster surrounding Facebook’s Beacon advertising program, CEO Mark Zuckerberg took responsibility for the company’s mistakes in a blog post this morning. Excerpt:
We’ve made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we’ve made even more with how we’ve handled them. We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it. . . . Instead of acting quickly, we took too long to decide on the right solution. I’m not proud of the way we’ve handled this situation and I know we can do better.
He also announced a new privacy control that lets Facebook members opt out of Beacon completely. (Before, you had to opt out on a case-by-case and site-by-site basis).
These were the right moves. Even if Facebook members have not yet started flocking to the privacy settings page in reaction to Beacon, the bad PR was not going away. It still might not go away, but at least Zuckerberg is addressing the issue straight on. In his post he explains the thinking behind Beacon:
When we first thought of Beacon, our goal was to build a simple product to let people share information across sites with their friends. It had to be lightweight so it wouldn’t get in people’s way as they browsed the web, but also clear enough so people would be able to easily control what they shared. We were excited about Beacon because we believe a lot of information people want to share isn’t on Facebook, and if we found the right balance, Beacon would give people an easy and controlled way to share more of that information with their friends.
But we missed the right balance. At first we tried to make it very lightweight so people wouldn’t have to touch it for it to work. The problem with our initial approach of making it an opt-out system instead of opt-in was that if someone forgot to decline to share something, Beacon still went ahead and shared it with their friends.
Some of this may just be Zuckerberg’s handlers an investors telling him he has to flog himself in public. When he announced Beacon and Facebook’s Social Ads initiative and was asked at the press conference whether he thought people would be put off by Beacon, his attitude was very different. “It is an ad-supported service,” he pointed out. I was in the room. His tone definitely implied that Facebook members are getting an awesome service for free, so they have no right to complain about how Facebook chooses to advertise to them. But that is such a walled-garden mentality.
Maybe Zuckerberg is finally beginning to realize that he does not have permission to track his customers indiscriminately across the Web. Nobody does anymore. Other Websites and advertisers take note: this could soon be you. Facebook is taking the heat because it is big, high-profile, and pushing the envelope. But it is not alone.
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What is the best response in this matter?…….
Ohh yeah, “Burn in hell Zuckerberg”!!!
too late. pls replace the CEO. the image of facebook is too bad now.
Mark is a liability now, before he drags down the 300 mils asset.
He’s trying to save the face.
With 15B valuation, and of over 300M on hand, all he does is apologize? C’mon Z.
Facebook service is not something that unique and special, I can find the same thing somewhere else.
FB started for college only, now everybody get access to it. If you really want to monetize, use your own users, make them pay you for doing extra stuff on the site, now it will be unique.
But once you go corporate, stuff hit the fan, you have to do it the way the white man (not racist) wants it.
But your apology didn’t do nothing…. and FB start sucking bad anyway… I’m going to HI5, it’s better anyway.
http://www.givemebeats.com/
Third parties are still sending all data to Facebook, so it’s just up to Facebook to decide whether to display it or not, right?
If that’s the case then it’s not good enough — it’s a small step to ensure that stuff I do on the NYT site doesn’t get displayed in FB, but I don’t want FB to have control/access to the data at all. If I opt out of beacon, NYT should never send my info to FB under any circumstances, but I don’t think that’s how beacon works. Any know for sure?
If we asked every CEO, CFO, CIO, and business person to apologize for a bad business decision this site would not be TechCrunch it TechApologies.
Every business makes bad decisions. It happens. Microsoft’s done it, Apple’s done it, Mozilla’s done it, heck even several companies I’ve worked for have done it. Part of doing is business is having bad ideas on occasion. Or even a bad release, implementation, or comment.
Is this the new standard? To expect a public apology for every bad business decision?
@Koby,
No. I bet it is not a standard to expect a public apology. As most ppl (not only from TC) states, apologies aren’t what we want. we want a fix.
All these PR stuffs aren’t going to help much for a sn. Maybe the kids who spend 5 hours a day on it won’t care much, but other ppl who is more valuable (ppl who actually make $$) do.
Eric,
Sorry, this is off topic, but could you dig more into the story about Yahoo linking out to other sites? Looks like they’re still linking out to sites on their main homepage.
I think their linking out cultivates partnerships in a way when sites see how much traffic they can send them - sites are bound to return the favor or want to do business with Yahoo to get more traffic. Overall, just helps Yahoo’s image in the web world too.
http://www.internetmarker.com/.....-homepage/
Thanks,
John
Learn from Craigslist Z-man.
People like simple, non-invasive solutions to their problems. Greed will help you grow, but too much will turn users away. For many people, facebook is already too complicated and too “EVIL”. There just isn’t a better (under 25) social networking option at this point in time. To survive, you need to make sure that when that option avails itself your userbase doesn’t pack their bags and leave. Yes, it will be hard to migrate to another network, but there may come a point where people have had enough and will bail on you at any cost….
Always remember that we don’t care about your business aspirations! We just want a solution to our problem.
This gives me even more power to build Ruby/Php website that will cover more security for members.
This is what happens when you have amateurs in charge. These guys have NO real world experience. No business experience and certainly no advertising experience let alone on line advertising knowledge.
This is hubris on their part. Didn’t we learn the fact that the “wonder kid” is seldom right in 2000.
I think its nice, warm and fuzzy that Mark said he was sorry though…
.
But its time to bring in the experienced and step aside Mark.
DUH!
well. how hard it is to move? 95% of things on facebook are garbage. you don’t need to carry your pokes and your fake gift to another network. just send an email to all your friends, thaz it.
There are better and less intrusive ways to innovate online advertising! Ways that are more meaningful to both user and advertiser!
Stay tuned …. we’ll wake you when we get there
I for one appreciate Facebook pushing the boundaries a little bit. And I also appreciate them fixing problems when they come to light. In this case, they made mistakes, but now it seems like Beacon is at a reasonable place. I’m no fan of Beacon (I’ve turned it off), but I don’t dare speak for the rest of the Facebook userbase, of which I have little in common.
As you said Zach, people like simple, non-invasive solutions to their problems. And Beacon attempts to solve one of those problems - how do I tell people about some of the things I’m doing on the web. Obviously people want to tell the world about their lives, and this is just an extension of that. They pushed it too far, and now they’ve pulled back.
@sd: You got both. A public apology and a fix.
imagine how many marriage it has ruined that the gift the husband buys for his gf shows up in his wife’s feed.
or a message show up in your wife’s feed ” you friend xxx(husband) has just spent 3 hours at the hotel next to his office”
” your friend xxx booked two round trips tickets to Mexico” then her phone rings ” hey hon, i need to go to NYC for a urgent meeting”
@Steve,
no. thaz not a fix. my data are still wandering around the network. You don’t see it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
“but of course in the meantime we’ll just continue to gather all the information anyway in the hopes that at some later point you will either come around to our proctological approach to mining your data, or you just forget that we are doing this”
ZERO-OUT YOUR ACCOUNT AND EXIT
“Obviously people want to tell the world about their lives”
no actually we don’t steve
Tom sez: “This is what happens when you have amateurs in charge. These guys have NO real world experience. No business experience and certainly no advertising experience let alone on line advertising knowledge.”
Er Tom, amateurs weren’t in charge of Coke when New Coke was released, these were the most professional, marketing savvy people around and yet they screwed up badly by treating their customers as guinea pigs with an untested (in the wild) major product change. Stuff happens, real world experience or not. I’m sure more than one person was involved in the decision and development process at Facebook.
Erick,
your last sentence, “Facebook is taking the heat because it is big, high-profile, and pushing the envelope. But it is not alone” hits the nail on the head. It’s good to see that Mark puts his ego aside to apologize for a feature gone wrong, which is a rarity in the business community.
I don’t care if facebook apologizes. all i care about is making money on facebook. i’m not.
Almost every site is dropping cookies on you anyway - how do you think they are doing behavioral targeting now? I think this everyone over-reacted to this issue.
Not only that, but I don’t even want the world to tell me about their lives.
“I for one appreciate Facebook pushing the boundaries a little bit. ”
Nice ends-justify-the-means logic you got there.
@22 (John) - Similar to how when I am logged into Amazon.com, any amazon associates advertising uses my personal data to show me items I may want to buy? Consumers are always leaving a paper trail of what they buy and I don’t see why the internet should be any different. For example, those price savings clubs at the grocery store track your buying history, but they provide you with several “value-adds” including notifications if one of the products that you have bought has a recall.
As Valleywag likes to tout, “Your privacy is an illusion”
There goes that overinflated $15 billion valuation! Facebook is not even worth $10 billion. Maybe not even $5 billion. Zuck has really messed things up and he’s shown that he’s incompetent. The sooner they replace him, the better. I don’t think he’ll last long: bills are growing and revenue is non-existent. They’re paying bills by diluting shareholders and selling more equity in hopes that a miracle will save their valuation. And we all know that will never come.
@Dave #12:
And I wonder how many ticked-off people who’ve just had Christmas ruined are doing just that?
Z’s Mea Culpa was no surprise, indeed. Not with major advertisers bailing from FB and Beacon all together!
Zen koan for the day:
If a valuation begins to crash, and only the investors hear it, does it make a sound?
ZUCKER!
Apologising makes you look weak!
Haven’t I taught you anything kid?
Make up a long nonsensical rant, then make the change while declaring there is no change!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
@24 - Exactly. The price saving clubs at grocery stores are a great offline example. Your privacy IS an illusion!
“… he does not have permission to track his customers indiscriminately across the Web. Nobody does anymore. Other Websites and advertisers take note: this could soon be you.”
Boloney. Tracking the behavior of your own customers for the purposes of marketing TO THEM, is one thing. Where Beacon stepped over the line is taking a person’s online behavior and using it to market TO OTHERS. There’s nothing wrong with Amazon building my profile to suggest books to me. It’s another thing all together if they email my friends and spill what books I bought.
Heck, companies can even use my behavior to market to others as long as it’s anonymous. Think Amazon’s “people who bought this also bought…” feature. The key is no direct link pointing specifically to me.
“This is an ad supported service”
wrong.
This is a user supported company, and you do not want to piss off your users.
@28 - I use the same ph# as about 10 of my friends for our “price saving” clubs (two separate groceries). So, while this is being tracked, it is being tracked across a number of us. The contact data is not even accurate anymore, it’s from 6 years ago.
My Facebook friend just got a Beacon item on his news feed about 10 minutes that said I’d rated a particular story on the NY Times. I’m trying to decide what is my favorite part of this:
* That I didn’t get any warning that this would be published, even though FB is supposedly asking before publishing
* That the item isn’t on my own profile, so I wouldn’t have known it was published if my friend hadn’t told me
* That, because it’s not on my profile, I have no way of removing it
* That I *didn’t* rate that article in the first place, and have never rated an article on the NYT site, so the info isn’t even true
Facebook can Zuck it, as far as I’m concerned.
Good thing they’re not public yet. Their stock would have been pummeled over this fiasco. And you’d think they’d figure out not to be sleazy in dealing with new features that would make users even remotely uncomfortable. I’m sure everyone gets so caught up in the big picture at Facebook that no one really stops to think about how users might react to it.
Would not have affected one advertiser and very few of the FB membership.
Good move by Zuck but it’s not the gigantic huge deal the tech bloggers made of it.
Nice you privacy police guys were on the ball anyway.
I am surprised that sites like NYT etc agreed to pass the data on to Facebook in the first place. it is their data, their customers. Some of the big brains at these marquee sites mist have said
“Whoa, wait a minute. Why are we sending them our data whether the user has opted in or not?”
Mark needs to lose his job — two major gaffes within 12 months is too much for a company with this promise. I wouldn’t push him out of the company, just out of the CEO role. It’s the main job of his investors right now — to save the company from his inexperience while capturing all that the young team has to offer in the way of fresh ideas.
Facebook really has taken a huge tank. It used to be a great site for college people to mingle. I remember when my school was thrilled to get on the site back when you had to request your school. Facebook is the new MySpace.
what works better than ranting?
ask moveon.org to start a petition against NYT about their abuse. rather than one against facebook.
“When we first thought of Beacon, our goal was to build a simple product to let people share information across sites with their friends. It had to be lightweight so it wouldn’t get in people’s way as they browsed the web, but also clear enough so people would be able to easily control what they
shared. We were excited about Beacon because we believe a lot of information people want to share isn’t on Facebook, and if we found the right balance, Beacon would give people an easy and controlled way to share more of that information with their friends.”
Do you believe that? No, I don’t. To me, this is a plain lie. He attempts to make it sounds like a poor execution with good will.
But it’s not.
Beacon is driven by the purpose of favoring advertisers and FB itself to profit from its users’ privacy at the first place. This so-called “letting people share information” is just the by-product of Beacon for FB marketing spin. His mistake is not because missing the balance on execution. His mistake is his thoughts that he is so smart that he can force most users sacrify part of their privacy by hijacking them with their so-called “social graph” built over times. He pretty got used to lying, it seems to me.
No matter what he said though, his repeated attempts already revealed his greed and intention to profit at the expense of users’ interests and privacy. You just need to wait a little while for another trial from him. FB is not for me anymore. Best of luck to all others.
“When we first thought of Beacon, our goal was to build a simple product to let people share information across sites with their friends ….. blah blah blah.”
I’m delighted that Zuck clarified their intentions. For some reason, I thought that perhaps when they “first thought of Beacon,” it was more along the lines of “How can we justify our 15 Billion valuation / make a lot of money … without pissing off our users to the point where they will leave Facebook. How far can we go?”
Save face? He said sorry in a freakin’ blog post. How lame is that? He isn’t man enough to call a press conference and decides to hide in back of his computer. What a chump.
@31 - You know damn well most of the people who sign up for the price savings cards supply the correct information. In any case, your UNIQUE bar code is being tracked, and the coupons you get with your receipt are targeted to you. This is the same way tracking cookies work. They don’t know exactly who you are, but they know what you surfing habits are.
@Dave,
totally agree. saying sorry in his tiny blog means nothing. it is like hiding under his blanket and whisper “sorry”.
later than, when ppl says he doesn’t do anything, he will forward you the blog post. “hey, I did. now go back to admit you were wrong about me”
@Chris,
I believe you are right. I think this falls on the third parties as much as facebook. I’m very surprised that the focus on techcrunch has been about the privacy mechanism on facebook rather than unauthorized information sharing about facebook users between two companies (regardless of publication on facebook and data retention/deletion policies).
I’m inferring a bit here, but it seems Facebook gave the 3rd parties some javascript to put on their site to send over the data in all cases to facebook (regardless of privacy settings). Just because facebook tells the 3rd parties to do something, doesn’t mean they are allowed. Quite possibly they are more at fault than facebook as they are releasing the information without user consent.
According to FB: “When a Facebook user takes a Beacon-enabled action on a participating site, information is sent to Facebook in order for Facebook to operate Beacon technologically. If a Facebook user clicks “No, thanks” on the partner site notification, Facebook does not use the data and deletes it from its servers. Separately, before Facebook can determine whether the user is logged in, some data may be transferred from the participating site to Facebook. In those cases, Facebook does not associate the information with any individual user account, and deletes the data as well.”
The deletion is not enough, it should never be sent unless the user agrees to it.
This incident goes too prove that a lot of these 20 somethings running web 2.0 start ups are no different than the ones running web 1.0 in the late 1990’s. What makes this sad is that really was a cool deal but Zuck, well he’s just kinda is starting to sound like someone who just sucks at getting along with people. Proves again that sometimes character and EQ is more improtant that IQ.
Everybody repeat after me:
privacy > external websites > edit settings > check the box
Now STFU about this issue.
@Permeate,
in your mini feed.
“your mom just Slap your face twice for swearing”
@em
“you just got the mushroom tip for being a fucktard”
What a joke!
This is just lip service. Facebook believes they have an “immunity idol” (Survivor Island) that gives them the God given right to push the envelope with their customer base.
What would be a better Facebook story would be who is going to be brought in as the new CEO. It’s coming!
The opportunity is to big to have a child navigate the Queen Mary.