I recently got an email from Patty Smith, the Director of Corporate Communications for Amazon. She pointed out to me – in a very kind manner – that Amazon is not a partner with Facebook in their Beacon program. I had previously blogged about Beacon, mistakingly pointing out that if a customer of Amazon bought a book on an embarrassing subject, it could get forwarded to their friends and colleagues on Facebook. Again, that won’t be the case: Amazon is not a partner on that program.
So I want to apologize to Amazon for writing that. And to Chris Abraham and Mark Harrison of Abraham Harrison for putting that on this blog. If you came here from Twitter via Chris, he didn’t write it. I did.
In my defense, I didn’t create this out of thin air. I first read of Amazon being part of this on none other than Michael Arrington on TechCrunch:
An example may be a purchase of a book or DVD from Amazon. Under Beacon, the fact of that purchase will be sent to Facebook and automatically included in the user’s News Feed.
Then on AllFacebook: The Unofficial Facebook Blog:
The new service is going to integrate with external sites such as Amazon, gaming sites, movie sites and other external sites to notify your friends of what you are up to. If you thought Facebook already knew a lot about you, wait until they know everything you are involved with outside of Facebook.
And finally, Rev2.0:
Consider this: you buy your favorite fiction novel on Amazon.com and some-time later when you check your Facebook account to see latest activities happening in your profile, you find out that the purchase made by you on Amazon.com appears as a news feed.
Apparently, you can’t always believe what you read on the internet. And kudos for the way Patty pointed it out. Class act.
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Jonathan, thanks for taking the time to correct the record on this issue. I appreciate your help! –Patty Smith
Facebook did announce Amazon as a partner but apparently not for Beacon. I guess I got that information from Techcrunch as well. It shows how quickly misinformation can spread and unfortunately I was a conduit for it.
Jermaine Dupri made a great point about this on the Huffington post the other day:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jermaine-dupri/lets-have-a-real-convers_b_74956.html
I could not agree with him more. Apologies for my contribution and I will definitely update that post ASAP.