Facebook Beacon, one month later

When I posted my original Inside//Out video on Beacon, I couldn't have known how vehemently anti-Beacon people in this social media space would react. Well, Facebook took notice of the opposition and Zuckerburg himself apologized to users on the matter asking for patience and thanking users for their support.

When I asked people outside of this microcosm if they knew about Beacon, I couldn't find one who did. They all had Facebook profiles and most thought it was an interesting idea to share activities in one network. We're all in the echo chamber and have to remember that a) we're the first line of defense/adoption and b) we're *way* ahead of the normal John and Jane consumer out there. We're all working in unchartered territory, Facebook needs to beta these things better in the future with some community participation instead of unleashing them. Facebook messed up, acknowledged it, made changes to respond and have a pretty good solution in place on their end (minus a few caveats).

On the marketer side, however, we need to make sure we ALWAYS allow people to opt-in to services like this from now on. If we use an opt-in, confirm it with people and let them opt-out, we're giving people full control of what's transmitted to third-parties. These are basic email marketing practices and can be adopted for situations like this.

So what's changed? Check out this video which gives a look at what changes are in place as well as their progression to get where we are today.

[Feed readers, please click through to the post if you cannot see the video.]

Here is a re-post of my diagram explaining how Beacon works:

Click to Enlarge

Marketers apply for and install the beacon code on their site Marketers then set up actions on their site to send information with Beacon Beacon looks on the user's local machine to see if they have a valid Facebook cookie, if it finds one, it sends the data to Facebook When users log in to Facebook, they are presented with a message asking to allow the data to be pulled in Users can automatically allow all, request to authorize each or deny all on a site-by-site basis Update: Facebook now allows you to opt-out of all beacon messages (data is still transferred to Facebook if the marketer sends it) If approved, the message is added to the users timeline (mini-feed) and is presented to their friends on the main landing page

Guidelines for marketers:

1. Make sure that you are allowing people to opt-in to use Beacon to push information to their profile. This is permission marketing 101.
   
2. Allow them to opt in to each action you hook Beacon up to (if there are three places you are using it, that's three opt ins).
   
3. Add some explanatory information every time information is sent, as you saw in the video the notification Facebook uses is seen only briefly. Give people a short reminder and allow them to opt out quickly.
   
4. Only use beacon for things that will add value to the user on Facebook. Hold off on the mundane things and focus on items that add value, reduce the time spent re-typing it on Facebook or hook into an application the user already has installed.
   

All of that said, would you recommend a client use it? If you are a marketer, would you implement this right now? Are you waiting for something more from Facebook before you step in? What is your most important takeaway from this experience?

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advertising, Facebook, Inside//Out, interactive marketing, marketing, Matt Dickman, social media, social networks, Techno//Marketer, beacon, privacy

Comments

[CK]

"We're all in the echo chamber and have to remember that."

Agreed. But since many a FB user is a teen or just a regular ol' consumer, I think this way:

We're marketers. We know the strings and the ponies and we have a responsibility to speak up and out when privacy is violated (and when practices like manufactured WOM occur). It goes against everything the blogs I read promote.

Just like other professions can spy something early on as they have that aptitude, same goes for us. No diff. I guess what you're (rightly) calling an echo-chamber, I'm looking at with a strong sense of responsibility. Make sense? Doesn't need to, it's just my (strong) opinion and many find practices like Beacon to be no big.

[Matt Dickman]

CK -- I completely agree with you here. We do have the responsibility to stand up for what's right and to spot these things ahead of time. I think that Facebook should really look at rolling things out to a beta group of users to test ideas and acceptance before unveiling them in the middle of the night.

That being said, this is still the wild west and I like to see innovations like this taking place as ways to add value and appeal to marketers (who pay the bills in the end and keep these sites open).

I am not sure I follow on the manufacturing of WOM though. To me, this lets people take what they do from other places and centralize it. Granted the e-commerce nature of those first Beacon users played a bit foul, but it does have promise especially among close friends. You'd know what I buy, but I'd still tell you what I like and don't independent of the "stream of data".