I was driving, somewhere work related, when I heard this report on NPR about the Facebook "I Like" button popping up on so many web sites. What you may not know is when you hit the button Facebook sends your demographic data to that company, oh and the demographic data from each of your Facebook "friends". My initial reaction was one of anger and to vow to never hit any "I Like" button ever again. But then I began thinking, the service that I use is free, to stay free it needs a revenue source and this is making them billions and saving each company millions in market research. Plus if you want to influence the products that you use and enjoy each and everyday then the "I Like" button is a benefit to you.
But then if it was so harmless and beneficial, then why did they keep this data mining secret? I have yet to make up my mind but the business practices of Facebook is starting to remind me of Microsoft about ten years ago.
The article from the NPR site
Here is the link:
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/10/01/pm-marketers-like-that-you-like
Here is the article:
Marketers like that you "Like"
The ubiquitous, but innocuous "Like" button on your favorite retail and media websites is a boon for marketers. Just one click and they access to a full range of your personal details -- and your friends' too.
KAI RYSSDAL: The movie to see this weekend -- by all the reviews that I've read, anyway -- is "The Social Network." It's the one about how Facebook got started and turned into the be all and end all of social networking that we know today.
Even if you don't have a Facebook account yourself, though, it's pretty hard to miss. Go to almost any corporate website today -- newspapers to consumer products to food -- and you'll notice the Facebook "Like" button. It's about the size of a Tic Tac. It's got a little picture of a thumbs-up on it.
Marketplace's Stacey Vanek Smith reports consumers and companies seem to be liking it.
STACEY VANEK SMITH: See a cute picture of your friend's Labradoodle?
Zing!
You like it. Read a great article about Fashion Week in the New York Times?
Zing!
You like it. A cool new tequila bar, "Wall Street 2," the striped grandpa cardigan at Urban Outfitters...
Zing, zing, zing!
Since it was launched five months ago, nearly two million websites -- from the New York Times to Pepsi to Yelp -- have added the Facebook "Like" button to their web pages, and it's not just about ego.
SALLY FIELD: You like me, right now! You really like me!
When you click on the little thumbs up icon, you hand over your Facebook data to the company and it gets access to your friends' data, too.
James Fowler is the co-author of "Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks."
JAMES FOWLER: All of a sudden, they're tapped in to this vast resource that is going to help them to have a much finer picture of each one of their consumers.
So that company you "like"...
Zing!
...Suddenly knows where you live, where you went on vacation, your favorite bands, your friends' favorite bands. Just about everything on your Facebook page. And the "Like" button boils all that down for companies. Fowler says that's what companies really like about the "Like" button.
FOWLER: It used to be that the problem was, we didn't have enough information. And now I think, increasingly, the probably is we don't have enough tools to sift through all of these mountains of data that we're collecting online. Essentially, what the "like" button is a one-question questionnaire.
In other words, pushing the "Like" button...
Zing!
...is like sending up a flare.
Whistle of flare flying up
A flare telling a company, "I like your products -- offer me a deal!"
Andreas Weigend teaches social networking and data mining at Stanford.
ANDREAS WEIGEND: If you actually really deeply think about, it is that you are doing the broadcasting and they're tuning in. I think it will change the behavior of the next billion people.
Weigend says the Facebook "Like" button is turning our relationship with business on its head. We are suddenly marketing products for companies: Flagging ourselves as people they should sell things to, endorsing the product to our friends and handing the company our friends' information.
MEGAN O'CONNER: We definitely have seen huge excitement and engagement around the "Like" button.
Megan O'Conner heads up social marketing for Levi's, one of the earliest "Like" button adopters. She says the simplicity of the "Like" button is key. In the last six months, about a million people have said they "like" Levi's.
Zing! Zing! Zing! Zing! Zing!
O'CONNER: We have ratings and reviews on our site, which takes a little bit longer for somebody to engage with, and this is a really light touch way that people can engage with our products and really share that engagement with their friends.
So you can "like" the Jaded Rinse Boyfriend jean...
Zing!
...or the Cry Baby Skinny jeans...
Zing!
...and set up a Friends Store with your Facebook pals so you can see what they like, and they can see what you like and Levi's can see what everybody likes.
"Connected" author James Fowler says the "Like" button is letting retailers tap into the all-powerful friends network for the first time.
FOWLER: We tend to choose friends who are like us. Sociologists call this "homophily": It's a word that literally means "love of like," birds of a feather flock together. Because we tend to choose these people who are like us, knowing what they like helps us to know what we like.
And we like to know what we like, says Matt Britton, CEO of social marketing firm Mr. Youth. He says we trust information from our friends.
MATT BRITTON: Say I'm searching for an Italian restaurant on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. If I see seven of my friends all like one restaurant, I'm going to go there, and I don't care what else is on a search engine.
Britton says Google does not like this.
Bzzzzz!
because Google has focused on bringing us the most popular results for our searches, but Facebook could show us what is most popular among our friends. What they thought of the movie you're buying a ticket for, or the brand of paint you're thinking about using in the nursery.
BRITTON: In a lot of ways, your social network soon is going to be the web. The web is your social network, where every website you're on and every web browser experience will be in some way socially enabled.
Britton says Facebook is hoping its "Like" button will just be the beginning, and eventually everything we search for, read about and shop for will be filtered through our network of Facebook friends. In other words, Facebook's little button?
Zing!
Is, like, huge.
I'm Stacey Vanek Smith for Marketplace.
And to include another thing to consider, here is a Wall Street Journal article about in "accidental" data mining committed by Facebook and its 3rd party apps.
A NOTE TO FACEBOOK EXECUTIVES ADMIT YOU ARE DATA MINING-TELL WHY WHEN WHERE HOW AND MOST PEOPLE WILL BE OK WITH IT. HIDING IT MAKES IT LOOK LIKE YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO HIDE!!!! (that part is from me :-))
The Journal Article Link:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304772804575558484075236968.html
The Article
Facebook in Privacy Breach
Top-Ranked Applications Transmit Personal IDs, a Journal Investigation Finds
By EMILY STEEL And GEOFFREY A. FOWLER
Many of the most popular applications, or "apps," on the social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying information—in effect, providing access to people's names and, in some cases, their friends' names—to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.
The issue affects tens of millions of Facebook app users, including people who set their profiles to Facebook's strictest privacy settings. The practice breaks Facebook's rules, and renews questions about its ability to keep identifiable information about its users' activities secure.
The problem has ties to the growing field of companies that build detailed databases on people in order to track them online—a practice the Journal has been examining in its What They Know series. It's unclear how long the breach was in place. On Sunday, a Facebook spokesman said it is taking steps to "dramatically limit" the exposure of users' personal information.
"A Facebook user ID may be inadvertently shared by a user's Internet browser or by an application," the spokesman said. Knowledge of an ID "does not permit access to anyone's private information on Facebook," he said, adding that the company would introduce new technology to contain the problem identified by the Journal.
"Our technical systems have always been complemented by strong policy enforcement, and we will continue to rely on both to keep people in control of their information," the Facebook official said.
"Apps" are pieces of software that let Facebook's 500 million users play games or share common interests with one another. The Journal found that all of the 10 most popular apps on Facebook were RapLeaf said that transmission was unintentional. "We didn't do it on purpose," said Joel Jewitt, vice president of business development for RapLeaf.
Facebook said it previously has "taken steps ... to significantly limit Rapleaf's ability to use any Facebook-related data."
Facebook prohibits app makers from transferring data about users to outside advertising and data companies, even if a user agrees. The Journal's findings shed light on the challenge of policing those rules for the 550,000 apps on its site.
The Journal's findings are the latest challenge for Facebook, which has been criticized in recent years for modifying its privacy rules to expose more of a user's information. This past spring, the Journal found that Facebook was transmitting the ID numbers to advertising companies, under some circumstances, when a user clicked on an ad. Facebook subsequently discontinued the practice.
"This is an even more complicated technical challenge than a similar issue we successfully addressed last spring on Facebook.com," a Facebook spokesman said, "but one that we are committed to addressing."The privacy issue follows Facebook's effort just this month to give its users more control over its apps, which privacy activists had cited as a potential hole in users' ability to control who sees their information. On Oct. 6, Facebook created a control panel that lets users see which apps are accessing which categories of information about them. It indicates, for example, when an application accesses a user's "basic information" (including a user ID and name). However, it doesn't detail what information friends' applications have accessed about a user.transmitting users' IDs to outside companies.
The apps, ranked by research company Inside Network Inc. (based on monthly users), include Zynga Game Network Inc.'s FarmVille, with 59 million users, and Texas HoldEm Poker and FrontierVille. Three of the top 10 apps, including FarmVille, also have been transmitting personal information about a user's friends to outside companies.
Most apps aren't made by Facebook, but by independent software developers. Several apps became unavailable to Facebook users after the Journal informed Facebook that the apps were transmitting personal information; the specific reason for their unavailability remains unclear.
The information being transmitted is one of Facebook's basic building blocks: the unique "Facebook ID" number assigned to every user on the site. Since a Facebook user ID is a public part of any Facebook profile, anyone can use an ID number to look up a person's name, using a standard Web browser, even if that person has set all of his or her Facebook information to be private. For other users, the Facebook ID reveals information they have set to share with "everyone," including age, residence, occupation and photos.
The apps reviewed by the Journal were sending Facebook ID numbers to at least 25 advertising and data firms, several of which build profiles of Internet users by tracking their online activities.
Defenders of online tracking argue that this kind of surveillance is benign because it is conducted anonymously. In this case, however, the Journal found that one data-gathering firm, RapLeaf Inc., had linked Facebook user ID information obtained from apps to its own database of Internet users, which it sells. RapLeaf also transmitted the Facebook IDs it obtained to a dozen other firms, the Journal found.
RapLeaf said that transmission was unintentional. "We didn't do it on purpose," said Joel Jewitt, vice president of business development for RapLeaf.
Facebook said it previously has "taken steps ... to significantly limit Rapleaf's ability to use any Facebook-related data."
Facebook prohibits app makers from transferring data about users to outside advertising and data companies, even if a user agrees. The Journal's findings shed light on the challenge of policing those rules for the 550,000 apps on its site.
The Journal's findings are the latest challenge for Facebook, which has been criticized in recent years for modifying its privacy rules to expose more of a user's information. This past spring, the Journal found that Facebook was transmitting the ID numbers to advertising companies, under some circumstances, when a user clicked on an ad. Facebook subsequently discontinued the practice.
"This is an even more complicated technical challenge than a similar issue we successfully addressed last spring on Facebook.com," a Facebook spokesman said, "but one that we are committed to addressing."
The privacy issue follows Facebook's effort just this month to give its users more control over its apps, which privacy activists had cited as a potential hole in users' ability to control who sees their information. On Oct. 6, Facebook created a control panel that lets users see which apps are accessing which categories of information about them. It indicates, for example, when an application accesses a user's "basic information" (including a user ID and name). However, it doesn't detail what information friends' applications have accessed about a user.
Facebook apps transform Facebook into a hub for all kinds of activity, from playing games to setting up a family tree. Apps are considered an important way for Facebook to extend the usefulness of its network. The company says 70% of users use apps each month.
Applications are also a growing source of revenue beyond advertising for Facebook itself, which sells its own virtual currency that can be used to pay for games.
Following an investigation by the Canadian Privacy Commissioner, Facebook in June limited applications to accessing only the public parts of a user's profile, unless the user grants additional permission. (Canadian officials later expressed satisfaction with Facebook's steps.) Previously, applications could tap any data the user had access to, including detailed profiles and information about a user's friends.
It's not clear if developers of many of the apps transmitting Facebook ID numbers even knew that their apps were doing so. The apps were using a common Web standard, known as a "referer," which passes on the address of the last page viewed when a user clicks on a link. On Facebook and other social-networking sites, referers can expose a user's identity.
The company says it has disabled thousands of applications at times for violating its policies. It's unclear how many, if any, of those cases involved passing user information to marketing companies.
Facebook also appeared to have shut down some applications the Journal found to be transmitting user IDs, including several created by LOLapps Media Inc., a San Francisco company backed with $4 million in venture capital. LOLapp's applications include Gift Creator, with 3.5 million monthly active users, Quiz Creator, with 1.4 million monthly active users, Colorful Butterflies and Best Friends Gifts.
Since Friday, users attempting to access those applications received either an error message or were reverted to Facebook's home screen.
"We have taken immediate action to disable all applications that violate our terms," a Facebook spokesman said.
A spokeswoman for LOLapps Media declined to comment.
The applications transmitting Facebook IDs may have breached their own privacy policies, as well as industry standards, which say sites shouldn't share and advertisers shouldn't collect personally identifiable information without users' permission. Zynga, for example, says in its privacy policy that it "does not provide any Personally Identifiable Information to third-party advertising companies."
A Zynga spokeswoman said, "Zynga has a strict policy of not passing personally identifiable information to any third parties. We look forward to working with Facebook to refine how web technologies work to keep people in control of their information."
The most expansive use of Facebook user information uncovered by the Journal involved RapLeaf. The San Francisco company compiles and sells profiles of individuals based in part on their online activities.
The Journal found that some LOLapps applications, as well as the Family Tree application, were transmitting users' Facebook ID numbers to RapLeaf. RapLeaf then linked those ID numbers to dossiers it had previously assembled on those individuals, according to RapLeaf. RapLeaf then embedded that information in an Internet-tracking file known as a "cookie."
RapLeaf says it strips out the user's name when it embeds the information in the cookie and shares that information for ad targeting. However, The Wall Street Journal found that RapLeaf transmitted Facebook user IDs to a dozen other advertising and data firms, including Google Inc.'s Invite Media.
All 12 companies said that they didn't collect, store or use the information.
Ilya Nikolayev, chief executive of Familybuilder, maker of the Family Tree application, said in an email, "It is Familybuilder's corporate policy to keep any actual, potential, current or prior business partnerships, relationships, customer details, and any similar information confidential. As this story relates to a company other than Familybuilder, we have nothing further to contribute."
Psalm 35:11
Ruthless witnesses come forward; they question me on things I know nothing about.
