Beware of the Facebook

Being an online marketer by trade, I have to delve into various online environments to see how they work and how they can be used for marketing initiatives. With all the chatter surrounding Facebook, the law, digital space, and contradictions, I thought it might be helpful to bring your attention to what's going on with them.

It seems that since the birth of the World Wide Web, the intention, due to its free flowing democratic makeup, is to try and catch it with its pants down – from URL vultures (purchasing a URL for $10 and reselling the URL for $10K to $100K or more, depending on the notoriety of the celebrity or the person who wants the URL back), the annoying growth of pop up ads, the email spammers (unsolicited emails you can’t trace to a company) and file sharing, etc.

Despite the idiosyncrasies of online marketing, Facebook’s new tactic is quite genius considering the architecture of the network is to ensure privacy. But capitalism reigns supreme. It is a known fact that most people on social networks seldom click on ads; they are more interested in their friends. Imagine if someone in your friends list endorsed a product, attaching their face to it. Wouldn’t that make you pay more attention to the product? Nine times out of ten, it would. However, the new advertising venture that Facebook launched last week faces many challenges.

The venture rests on its members for legitimization, under the guise of giving the audience the freedom to choose. Participation could mean publicizing your online behavior to your network of friends. For example, it’s Halloween and Ricky’s [the costume store] has regional ads placed throughout Facebook. It reminds you to purchase your costume. You click through from Facebook to Ricky’s website and buy your Catwoman costume. After making your purchase, a thought springs to mind, “Oh, I want to get a whip to go with the outfit!” You leave Ricky’s website and do a search for ‘black whips’, which brings back a slew on pornographic sites. With the new software Facebook has developed, your shopping history can now be attached to your profile in reference to Ricky’s as a selling point for potential customers, Ricky’s obtains information about you, and visiting pornographic sites is added to your demographic information. Privacy is completely lost and no disclaimer or acknowledgment has been checked.

The other problem is in New York State, it is illegal for Facebook to operate with other advertisers and not get sued. The statute says that “any person whose name, portrait, picture, or voice is used within this state for advertising purposes or for the purposes of trade without the written consent first obtained can sue for damages.” This 100-year-old privacy law does not translate into our digital times. You could purchase an item from a particular store, but you may not want to have your profile attached to the product. When the CAN-SPAM Act 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) was devised, one of FTC’s goals was to eliminate the abuse of marketers on the web. The internet has made these companies faceless and in turn unreachable entities. The advertising industry partnering with social networking sites is no different to what CAN-SPAM has been trying to control or to keep in compliance for the past five years.

Facebook’s new ad schema makes sense for an environment that is difficult to penetrate—-but what’s the cost? Be careful when searching online within the web of these social network sites. Your privacy can seriously be compromised.