beacon

The torrent of bad press over Facebook's privacy policies has led to the demise of its much-disliked advertising program called "Beacon." The program, which was considered a marketing coup when first unveiled two years ago, has been phased out in ... accordance with the settlement of a year-old class action lawsuit. At the heart of the lawsuit was the contention that Facebook had failed to properly inform its many users of the privacy compromises introduced by Beacon, which used the data collected from member pages to help third-party sites tailor more effective advertising schemes. ... (view more)

Less than a month after Facebook announced its Beacon advertising program, the social-networking company has made a serious retreat from its initial plans. In a statement on Facebook's blog last Wednesday CEO Mark Zuckerberg issued a public apology ... for the way Beacon was introduced. "We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it," Zuckerberg said. Beacon was Facebook's most recent attempt at finding a way to monetize the increasingly popular web site. The initial launch was announced on November 6, with 44 high-profile companies signed on for the kick-off. Beacon began as ... (view more)