One of the things that was clarified for me with all of the coverage of this recent Facebook Beacon episode was both the effectiveness and limitations of both mainstream media and the blogosphere in covering major issues of the day.
When Facebook introduced Beacon amidst much fanfare, the advertising, business, and technology communities followed the story with great interest. It seemed to offer a lot: traditional display mixed with viral word of mouth. Major brands, both online and offline were partnering with Facebook on Beacon.
Soon things started to go haywire as people suddenly found out that things they bought were showing up in their ‘friends’ Facebook’s newsfeed without their knowledge or permission. It turned out that Beacon, which had led it partners and the media to believe that was to be opt-in, was, in fact, opt-out. And it was also clear that Facebook did not let its 50,000,000 users that they’d be playing roles as marketing agents from now on. Disasters began happening and the blogosphere was first to react.
Geeks examined the technology behind the program here, here, and here. Marketing bloggers wondered if it was good strategy here, here, and here. All excellent posts. All made sense. All contributed to the conversation.
The problem here is that we all can’t act as a cohesive investigative unit, uncovering the ‘truth’ all together. We go at it from the angle we are familiar with. We get info bit by bit, some of which can be misleading and simply untrue. That’s exactly what Stefan Berteau of Computer Associates ran into in his trying to get answers from Facebook. While Stefan was apparently finding out - and thankfully telling us - he was getting his answers from a customer service rep. A possibly uninformed on the exact details customer service rep.
Bloggers often have a limited amount of time to research, confirm, and blog about these things. We have jobs to do. So, unfortunately, while we can have great impact, it can be limited in its influence.
In the meantime, much of the mainstream media looked at this from afar, with only passing interest, waiting to see if the situation blew up in Facebook’s face. And when it did - or at least when it came time for Facebook to respond - they did it mostly with press releases and shut off communications channels. And most of their responses were to the mainstream business and technology press. The problem there is that their explanations were often covered in PR spinspeak and technobabble. The very points that key people in the blogosphere raised weren’t answered. The mainstream media simply reported how Facebook says it will now carry on their Beacon program.
This is a classic way of responding. Assure the media that you’ve heard the complaints and that changes are coming. A mea culpa with a smiley face. The mainstream media may not know all the details and therefore not ask the key questions. So we may never know as a whole what the real deal is. Unless we keep up on those blogs. But then again…we’ve all got jobs to do…and other things to blog about.
3 Comments » Posted on December 4th, 2007 by Jonathan Trenn
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