Net Results:When the history of the social networking phenomenon that is Facebook is written, last week will probably go down as the point when the backlash began in earnest, writes John Collins.
Seen as Bebo for grown-ups, Facebook has grown exponentially since it was launched to Harvard University students in February 2004. Despite only opening to the great unwashed of the internet in September last year, it now has 55 million active users - including 190,000 in the Republic.
Even Bill Gates and co have fallen for Facebook. Microsoft's investment of $240 million (€167.65 million) for a 1.6 per cent stake in Facebook last month values it at a cool $15 billion.
However, a new feature of the social network's enhanced advertising programme has bloggers and privacy advocates up in arms.
Quietly rolled out with a dozen retailers in the US just before the Thanksgiving holiday, Facebook Beacon publishes details of your purchases from e-commerce sites on your profile page. The idea is that if I buy a table from, let's say Ikea, it is announced to all my friends the next time I log on to Facebook.
But what if that purchase is a surprise for my wife? No wonder headlines have been screaming Facebook is ruining Christmas. Personally I think Beacon is beyond creepy.
The feature, which uses Web browser cookies that practically every website employs, notifies users of what will be reported but users have to say explicitly that they don't want it shared with their friends. Why should I have to opt out of this? And why was it so hard to opt out initially?
(Facebook has made some slight tweaks to the service that mean the opt-out option is now easier to spot.) Shouldn't I just be able to click a button at the check-out to say "yes, I do want to share this with my Facebook buddies?"
It's easy to see the allure to advertisers. Shoppers passively recommend their goods and services to people they have already indicated they trust. It's the mythical viral marketing (read "word of mouth") automated through the web.
Early cheerleaders of the interactive web - web 2.0., read/write web or whatever you call this much richer internet that has been facilitated by ubiquitous broadband - said that one of the key factors was that content on your site, whether it's a restaurant review or a picture of a family holiday, may be user-generated but it remains the property of the user.
In many ways what Facebook is saying to users is that actually, it owns your data and also the details of what you've bought from our carefully selected partners - ie whoever pays us the necessary dollars to be promoted on our users' personal news feeds.
Facebook and other social networking websites are constantly trying to push the limits of what they can do with their users' information in order to maximise advertising dollars. The nature of these networks means it is a dicey game to play.
Users share hugely personal information on these sites. Sometimes it is unintentional such as the Fianna Fáil councillor who this week told the world his personality type makes him like cocaine, courtesy of the popular What Drug Are You? application.
Users see these networking sites as a place to go and hang out and they increasingly feel as if they have ownership of them. In reality they are owned by venture capitalists and the bright young things who happened to have the right idea at the right time and intend to cash in on that.
Google has learned that it doesn't take very long to go from internet darling to pariah. It's no coincidence that the Google backlash began when power users (ie the geeks) felt that the search giant was playing loose and easy with their personal data. Welcome to the club, Facebook.
