Why would I care about the Facebook beacon stuff anyway?
I don't use Facebook all that often ... particularly after using Twitter and loading the Twitter update application. I still use LinkedIn too -- and, in fact, have very few friends in Facebook -- so why am I concerned?
Because this ad-plan is way out there on the privacy front: in that I am only given an opt-out option when I visit an affiliate site -- and I can't see which sites are affiliate sites are until I happen upon one! It's crazy to me that the Facebook folks would actually choose to opt-everyone-in by default rather than the other way around!
I wrote the privacy email address that is available within the privacy section of the Facebook site and stated that I would not be using their tool again until I know that I don't have to opt-out ... and here is what I received in response:
"Facebook is now affiliated with a variety of websites, all of whom
can, with your permission, send the actions you take on their sites
back into Facebook. These actions will appear in your Mini-Feed and may
appear in the News Feeds of your friends.
If you are logged in
to Facebook and take an action on an affiliated site, the website will
alert you that it has a story it would like to send to your Facebook
profile. You can then choose to take the following actions:
1. You can click the ‘Learn More’ link to find out more about that
story or edit your privacy settings for these external stories.
2. You can click the ‘This isn’t me’ link if the Facebook account does
not match the person using the external site. In this case, Facebook
will never publish the story or otherwise share any information with
the user’s friends on Facebook.
3. You can click ‘No Thanks’ in
which case Facebook will never publish that story or otherwise share
any information with your friends on Facebook.
4. You can click
'close' or simply ignore the notification in which case the story will
be sent to Facebook, but will not be published on the site. Next time
you navigate to the Facebook Home page after interacting with an
affiliate site, you’ll receive a second reminder that the affiliate
website is about to publish a story on your behalf. If you select ‘See
More’ and then click the 'X' next to any story, the story will not be
published. If you click 'close' or navigate away from your home page,
the external story will then be published in your Mini-Feed and
potentially the News Feeds of your friends.
Please keep in mind
that affiliate websites never have access to your profile information,
nor does Facebook receive any personal data about you from an affiliate
site. Let us know if you have any further questions regarding the
privacy settings for this feature."
That doesn't work for me ... and I told them so.
I will, today, go into my Facebook account and:
a) Turn off Twitter updates
b) Save my profile and not visit again until I have a default opt-out capability or, at a minimum, a single opt-out capability within my profile rather than via unknown affiliate sites!
Social-smocial: I don't need a Facebook account.
So what does this have to do with Web Analytics?
The most important idea: the beacon is the same type of tracking tool that analytics vendors use for on-demand "software as a service" applications. If you're not familiar with that - wiki has a handy overview that is appropriate for any type of tracking. The similarity in the type of tracking method is not the important idea, though. Back when, DoubleClick learned that being upfront and open about privacy is the key to keeping the visitors (and therefore the clients) happy. Thus, though the tool may be the same -- the method of implementation is the key to success. (That's been a recurring theme for me - maybe I'll stay on that for a while)
