Facespook and the ghost pages that go click in the night

From ghost writing to ghost pages - Techcrunch has some more details on how the Facebook Beacon spyware (aka Facespook) works when you visit a vendor page:

Every time someone visits a Facebook Beacon partner (there were 40 of them at the time of the announcement) and performs a pre-defined action like writing a review or rating a hotel, a little Beacon toast pops up alerting you that your action is being sent to Facebook. That pop-up is actually coming from Facebook, and in some cases may be counted as a Facebook page even though the person seeing it does not normally click through to Facebook. It is triggered by a tag on the partner’s page known as an iFrame, which then tells your browser to load a page from Facebook within the site you happen to be visiting. This occurs even when a non-Facebook member visits that page and performs the same action. In that case, it creates a ghost iFrame, though, because the viewer does not see anything. But data is still sent to Facebook.

Italics are mine.....

Not only that, but it would seem that every time an iFrame loads, it counts as a unique - and (as I understand it) it works as such for all those many, many millions of non - members too. So thats why they were happy to finally put content in emails

Now this raises another very interesting point, ie exactly what is sent back - just the event, or does any of the data go back? If the latter, then this is a fascinating thing. If a non-member of Facebook - or even a member come to think of it - writes a piece of content on another site that is then sent back to Facebook, and since Facebook's T&C essentially say that any content that gets lodged in F/B is theirs, irrevocably, for ever, does this mean that Facebook gets its mitts on that review too ?

So, for example if Amazon were to become a Facebook partner, and Facespook is returning all the reviews from members and non members alike, it won't take long before they've built up a review base equal to Amazon's.

(Postscript...yes, I know they say they won't.....but on their track record so far....)

(Post-postscript - the numerical illiteracy of the Facebook Fanboi Fraternity flabbergasts....here are the numbers:

Sept - Pageviews 13.8bn, Uniques 24.2 m
Oct - Pageviews 14.0bn, Uniques 24.3m
Nov - Pageviews 14.4 bn, Uniques 29.2m

So, gentle reader....how, you may ask, does any system with a c 3% rise in downstream Pageviews in November manage a c 20% rise in Uniques upstream. Silly you - if you are a Fanboi, you would not ask this....no, you would instead come to the conclusion that Facebook Traffic Surges in October!

There are lies, damn lies, and lies about statistics )