January 16th, 2009 by Sten Franke
What is going on? Shouldn’t Facebook actually be happy about the fact of a well accepted widget among users? Within only a week, Burger King’s newest widget was installed by more than 82.000 users, who then deleted over 230.000 users out of their own friend’s list to get one free Whooper.
This particular approach was definitely a huge success from marketing point of view. Unfortunately; Facebook execs were not amused with it. Hence, they are now suspending this application from the network with following statement:
We encourage creativity from developers and brands using Facebook Platform, but we also must ensure that applications follow users’ expectations of privacy. This application facilitated activity that ran counter to user privacy by notifying people when a user removes a friend. We have reached out to the developer with suggested solutions. In the meantime, we are taking the necessary steps to assure the trust users have established on Facebook is maintained.
Truthfully, I ask myself, what this application in a way does, to be even considered as colliding with data privacy protection. With Beacon, Facebook was definitely not so squeamish. Or perhaps Facebook has all together different intentions? Joe Bubble speculates that Zuckenberg might have discovered a way to make money out of it. Well, I’m certainly open for different opinions and would love to hear them. Actually, there exist quite enthralling discussions regarding this matter in our office.
