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From it’s very beginning’s Facebook was touted to be an online haven. Unlike it’s other social counterparts, like MySpace, it had a certain air of saftey. They people we connected with were called, “Friends”. We could control who saw our profile and who was “Friended”.

Unfortunately for us, Facebook pushes the envelope of privacy over a cliff. They use that comfort of saftey against us. In a sense we are giving our information to the very enemy we hope to be protected from.

In November of 2007, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, stood before a packed crowd of advertsing executives to unveil a new concept in the ad space. He allowed companies to use the Facebook social graph and to develop highly targeted ads.

Large brands such as Coca-Cola (KO), Sony Pictures (SNE) and Verizon (VZ) have signed on for this effort. Part of the engine powering this new ad system is called Beacon, which takes data from 44 web destinations and mashes it up with Facebook’s internal information to help build more focused advertising messages.

While it seemed to be a briliant concept, a quick review reveals that Beacon might turn out to be a privacy nightmare for the company.

The 44 sites that have partnered with Facebook include everyone from Kongregate, LiveJournal, NYTimes (NYT), Sony Online, Blockbuster (BBI), Bluefly.com, STA Travel, The Knot, TripAdvisor, Travel Ticker, TypePad, viagogo, Vox, Yelp, WeddingChannel.com and Zappos.com.

These partner sites put a little a piece of Facebook javascript on their web site and certain information, cleverly (and innocuously) labeled as a user alert, is sent to Facebook. For instance, Fandago users can publish information about the movies they saw. It all seems like a clever idea because it lets Facebook triangulate your likes and dislikes even more, and deliver more focused ads.

Not everyone was pleased with the announcement. MoveOn.org started a massive campaign against the Beacon service.  The website states – “When you buy a book or movie online–or make a political contribution–do you want that information automatically shared with the world on Facebook?”

Less than one month later, Mark Zuckerburg, wrote a post on Facebook’s blog stating, “We’ve made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we’ve made even more with how we’ve handled them. We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it.” 

As we will see, Facebook does a great job with saying the right things, but they simply do not follow through. In fact Beacon is still a viable product. Check out the FAQ on the Beacon Product.

In the next installment we will provide more information about Facebook’s hidden agenda to exploit it’s users.

This is Part 1 of a series I am doing on Social Media Sites and Privacy.

Here we go. Facebook is a social hang out for the lowest common denominator of the human condition. 

To say that this is a heated debate would be the understatement of the year. I have spoken with many, many people and have done a fair amount of research to be able to back up the above statement. I will include all the links and then you can make your decision.

Facebook is a corporation not your friend.

Did Facebook get valued at $16 billion because they hang with you at Starbucks? Facebook is by it’s nature a collector of information. We sign up and give them all the information they need on our profile. We want our ”friends”  to know as much about us as possible.  Every bit of personal information you put on your profiles, notes, wall, and posted pictures are all compiled and used to sell to advertisers.

Don’t believe me check out this company. Usocial is an information broker who sells friend profiles on Facebook.

Their website says, ” Friends: people say they can’t be bought, though in this day and age it’s simply not the case. Our newest service will enable you to get more Facebook friends with ease by buying them in packages up to 5,000.

How we get you friends is simply by finding out exactly what industry, niche, or target market you are wanting to find people to target and then we go about attaining relevent friends for you and adding them to your Faceboook account. Every single person we gain for you will be real users and exactly relevant to what you are looking for — this is our guarantee.

On average and if marketed to correctly, every Facebook fan or friend you have is generally worth $1 to you per month, which is a figure anyone using this site correctly can back up. This means that even on a purchase of a 1,000 friend pack, you will not only return your investment in the first month, but earn more than five times what you’ve invested. Try and tell us that’s not a great investment.

Usocial seems extremly confident in their service. Does it make you mad that you might be manipulated to friend someone for the express purpose of monatary gain? It should.

Tomorrow we will talk about Facebook’s Terms of Service Agreement and how they use a service to track the sites you visit and the things you buy. Yes, they still use it.

Hope  is an interesting word that is being bantered about these days. It sounds great, doesn’t it? What does it really mean?

 The dictionary defines Hope as: 

To wish for something with expectation of its fulfillment.

We all talk, talk, talk about change and we hope things get better, but nobody does anything to fufill the hope. In reality, by the definition I just read, hope is nothing more than a dream expecting someone else to fufill it. I guess  hope is just about as useless as intention which means:  A course of action that one intends to follow.

Potential is another word that I have come to despise. Potential means, Capable of being but not yet in existence. As a young buck my sales career was wrapped up in potential. I had all the makings of a superstar salesperson. My managers saw it. My wife saw it. Everyone could see the possibility of greatness, but the price felt like it was always to high for me to pay.

So Hope, Intention, Potential – They can all have the same end in the life of a person. They are all unused energy.

Action? Oh wow! That’s a whole different word. When you start talking action then people really get upset. I mean folks get downright pissed off when you put your word into action. Who does he think he is? You think it takes audacity to hope – try action!

The Audacity of Action is what rocks the world.

Bleesed Assurance? Really? It doesn’t seem like it to me. Let me ask a question: Why are the walls of our Christian bookstores filled with propaganda attempting to support our “rock solid” faith in Jesus. Is the Bible so difficult to understand that we need a Rick Warren to tell us our life is purpose driven? Do our knees buckle so quickly that we pine for the Beth Moore Super Pack with a journal, study group binder, 8 session DVD, and don’t forget the Soundtrack.

The truth seems so difficult to comprehend that we require an intravenous dose of Jesus. We need Jim Caviezel (he has dibs on any Jesus performance) to read the Bible for us in a dramatic way. God incarnate just does not cut it for us anymore – His story is not life changing enough. The sincere milk of the word is choking us because we are lactose intolerant.

It’s okay…God is used to being treated like he needs an interpreter. I just hope, for our sake, the the interpretation is not done by Cody Liney from Disney’s Hanna Montana.

Oh, wait! It is.