Will Facebook have to face the Federal Trade Commission over their three-week-old Project Beacon and Social Ads platforms? If the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy have their way, you bet.
The Problem with Facebook’s “Beacon”
It’s the holiday’s right? A time for merrily buying Christmas gifts, Hanukkah gifts, Kwanzaa gifts (and, if you’re wondering, time for buying MY birthday present–the 29th of December, write it down…).
Facebook, ABC News Partner On Political App
The concept of getting one’s news on Facebook sounds like a joke. It’s not, though, and following a partnership between them, both ABC News and the social networking site are hoping the idea will take off.
MoveOn Launches Campaign Against Facebook
Facebook is busy ruining Christmas, and that’s the least of the worries. Violations of user privacy are higher on the worry list, and MoveOn.org has launched an online petition and ad campaign against Facebook’s brand new "Beacon" program.
Facebook To Tweak Status Updates
Compared to anything you’ll see coming from the BBC or CNN, this is admittedly a pretty minor piece of news. Yet it’s nonetheless nice to hear that Facebook plans to drop the word “is” from its users’ status updates.
LinkedIn Growing More Quickly than Facebook
Nick O’Neill has an interesting post on his very good “Social Times” site. (How, by the way, does he find time to post so much??)
Facebook’s Memory May Be Too Good
Most Facebook users enter a lot of information into the site, and as it turns out, it’s not at all easy to make Facebook forget it. As a result, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is now eyeing the social network.
U2 Puts New Song On Facebook
U2 may or may not support Facebook more than MySpace, Bebo, and all the other social networks out there. But it apparently has ties to the creators of a Facebook app called iLike, and the famous band has, in any event, made a previously unreleased song available on Mark Zuckerberg’s site.
Bono Getting Jiggy with Facebook
Maybe it’s the future of music and maybe it’s not, but I think U2’s experiment with Facebook and the iLike widget is a pretty interesting move.
No Non-Microsoft Love For Facebook
We usually write about events: acquisitions, hirings, firings, and whatnot. There’s a sort of non-event that’s hard to ignore, however, and that’s how few companies have been willing to back up Microsoft’s bet on a $15 billion Facebook.