Facebook's Friendster moment

D'you recall when the wheels came off Friendster's bus? When they started to think they would lead and their customers would follow supinely? Or digg's little user revolution? Santayana once said that those who cannot recall the past are doomed to repeat it, and Facebook were a tad forgetful over FaceAds - and are thus having their own Friendster moment. As The Henry Blodget Blog notes:

We already hate the idea of bombarding friends with lists of the crap we buy. The fact that Facebook will only let us opt-out of that bombardment on a case-by-case basis (at the virtual cash register at third-party sites) is infuriating.

If we may indulge in a bit of "we told you so"...(and its not as if no-one else told them at the time either....we were just one of many).

We said that on this evidence they didn't have a cluetrain about how social nets worked......we suggested a better approach, and even warned them that the legal eagles would be after them!

Anyway, they have been hit by the double whammy of civil liberty watchdogs MoveOn and 2,000+ (and rising) pissed off punters using their own Facebook group to mobilise against them.

Don't you love irony

Over to the Blodgett Blog again:

After MoveOn complained, Facebook said MoveOn "misrepresented" the truth. MoveOn immediately fired back:

"If Facebook's argument is that sharing private information with hundreds or thousands of someone's closest 'friends' is not the same as making that information 'public,' that shows how weak Facebook's argument is," Green said in an e-mail. "Facebook users across the nation are outraged that the books, movies, and gifts they buy privately on other sites are being displayed publicly without permission--and it's time for Facebook to reverse this massive privacy breach."

Ouch.....here's our next bit of free consultancy - if I were Facebook I'd invest in a bit of decent PR* - that was an unnecessary own goal, bettered only by the hundred year event speech!

Anyway, the solution is fairly obvious - eat humble pie :

Facebook should immediately make Beacon 100% opt-in. Not because MoveOn is complaining--because the current system will drive users right out the door. The tiny minority of Facebookers who want to bombard friends with lists of the crap they buy--and friends who are actually interested in hearing about this--can elect to do so. The vast majority who don't should never have to hear about this ridiculous concept again.

And what of that $15bn valuation I hear you ask........well, we said it was hard to believe the first time round....now its even harder. Shark jumping practice time methinks.....

Postscript - even the Forrester team, who praised FaceAds initially, are starting to have second thoughts
now.

* A PR friend of mine has since told me they have pretty good PR people, so it sounds like a listening to them issue?