I use Facebook, and I’m pretty liberal when it comes to adding new applications, joining groups, and being fans of a company. I’m a pretty open guy.
But that behavior, becoming fans of a company, exposed an interesting problem recently. I became a fan of Kinzin—for no real reason, other than that I liked thier design and the way they solved a problem of online communities: namely, privacy controls for family, especially kids.
So imagine my irony-laced surprise when a friend sent me this screenshot, of an ad she said she clicked on because she thought I was explicitly messaging it to her:
This ad ran in the ad spot on Facebook, and it uses me as an endorser of the Kinzin service.
But there’s a big difference between ME telling people I like something (i.e. a movie), and the owners of that service telling people that I like their service.
Facebook is promoting this social targeting as the premiere feature that makes their advertising valuable, at least according to their advertising page.
As far as I can tell, there’s no way to stop a single company from using your image, name and endorsement, if you’re a fan of that company. It’s not in the settings for that company. You can stop companies from using you, it’s in Privacy -> Applications and Ads -> Ads.
In about a week (I’m waiting a week so you can look now and see if I’m promoting Kinzin) I’m going to remove myself as a fan for Kinzin. I don’t dislike their service, but I don’t want to be an inadvertent (and uncompensated) shill for them.
“The most common human act that writing a novel resembles is lying. We lie daily, very complexly, and at great length. If not for our excessive vanity and our over-active imaginations, we would be quite difficult to deceive.”
Thanks for the heads-up Travis, I wasn't aware of this issue. I've updated my privacy setting accordingly.
Posted by Jason Landry at 3:38 pm on Mar. 18, 2008
Hi Travis; I'm the head of the Kinzin team. I hope you'll excuse the long comment.
We've been experimenting with Facebook Social Ads for a few weeks now. Facebook Social Ads have a feature called "Social Actions", whereby, apparently, Facebook users will be told when a Friend of theirs (it has to be a Friend) has some relationship to the Facebook app or group being promoted. Honestly, I'd never actually seen it in action until looking at your screen shot today. As an advertiser, Facebook just says to us "Hey, we've got this great feature. You should use it." Obviously, it's a problem for me if Facebook offers me their social ads product with the suggestion that it will help our business grow, and it turns out to piss people off. We are going to ask around a bit more, but as of now have turned off social actions on our ads.
As a Facebook user, I'm of two minds about this whole trend. On the one hand, Facebook is a social, but proprietary, space. Basically everything we do and say in the space belongs to Facebook and they can use that information any way they like according to the Terms of Service we all agreed to. They make it pretty clear, in fact, that their whole business model is to sell that information. On the other hand, Facebook doesn't do much in the way of telling you *how* they'll use your info, just that they will. This is a new area: proprietary social spaces, and the standards of etiquette are still being set, apparently through trial and error.
Posted by Michael at 4:30 pm on Mar. 18, 2008
Interesting.
On the one side, you have me, being a fan of your service without really understanding the unintended consequences of that.
On the other, you have you guys, buying "social ads" without really understanding the unintended consequences of that.
And in the middle, you have Facebook, trying to broker and profit from our social relationship.
Posted by Travis Smith at 10:14 am on Mar. 19, 2008
It raises some very interesting questions about ownership and culture, to be sure.
As of now, though, I think we both understand the implications of Facebook's "social ads" a bit better. You can be sure that you won't see your status as a Fan of Kinzin used in that way again. I'm currently putting together a little statement of principles to post on the Kinzin Fan page, so everybody's expectations are in synch, and we don't run into this problem again.
Thanks for bringing it up, and helping us do what we do better.
You can scroll right easily by holding down the SHIFT key and using your scroll wheel. (Firefox users trying this will end up jumping to old Web pages until a) Firefox releases a fix, b) they change their settings like so.)
