Facebook will use your content in its ads (no, you don’t get paid)
According to Read Write Web (say that five times fast) and AdAge, Facebook will begin to use your status updates, Places checkins, Page Likes, etc. in related ads.
So if you check into a Starbucks and say, “I love my Starbucks coffee”, Facebook can take that and put it in an ad next to your friends’ Walls:
Facebook is calling these “Sponsored Stories” instead of ads. Tomato, tomahto. They’re using your content directly in advertisements. Without your permission and without any way to opt-out.
As dire as that sounds, the upside is that said ads will only be shown to your Facebook friends, not strangers. The downside? No, you don’t get a kickback.
Upside #2: Facebook is still free. And until there’s a paid version (there won’t be) Zuckerberg and company will continue to use our late night rants, birthday wishes and favorite restaurants to make a lot of money.
What do you think? Are they crossing the line into Creepy Town? Are you outraged they’d take your likeness, content and location and turn it into an ad? Or are you happy to have what will hopefully be more relevant advertising? Sound off in the comments.
See the official Facebook video explanation of Sponsored Stories here.
Image courtesy of InsideFacebook.com.
Gmail won’t let you opt out of their content-based advertisements either, but you easily can block either or both.
“There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch” and, in my opinion, this is easily affordable.
It doesn’t bother me so much, it is just going to the same people who could have seen the original status (except that a lot more people pay attention to the status than the ad, hence SOCIAL MEDIA.) But then again, I am of the Facebook generation, where privacy is a forgotten relic, like phones with cords and vhs.
@Mark Stafford True, but Gmail doesn’t take the content of your email and use it in an ad next to the Gmail account of someone on your contact list either, using your name to sell the product.
@David Rathbun Aren’t you already kind of selling the product my talking about it? I’m on the fence about this for a couple of reasons. First, they are only showing it to my friends because nobody else would care what I said about a product. Let’s be real, even my friends barely care.
But, it does drive home the fact that Facebook has some powers that people forget about. I guarantee that there is someone at Facebook monitoring how many times a person says “I’m leaving on vacation in ____ days” right above their contact information and home town. That’s creeper. I agree with Autumn, privacy is dead. Sadly.