Facebook is trying to implement a universal “Like” button for non-Facebook sites so that your friends will be able to see what you like across the Internet. (YouTube just added a “Like” button, but I’m not sure if that has any relation to Facebook, yet.)  Sites across the Internet also have incorporated a share button, one of which is on this very site to help, well, share information with others.

Facebook plans Internet takeover, one "Like" button at a time.

These features, along with things like “Recommendations” and “Live Stream” are known as social plugins which will be broadcasting your information to partnering sites unless you opt out. That’s right, you’re automatically signed up for it thanks to  Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.  It is predicted that 30% of websites will have some of these plugins  in a month. Some of the new features you can expect from Facebook are as follows:

• Instant Personalization: Facebook will try to help the web cater to you by giving up your information when you move to another site like Yelp or Pandora. In the case of Pandora, the music site will be able to go through some of your favorite artists and make Pandora more YOU friendly, because we were too lazy to type in “Coldplay” before. Or you can go to Yelp and see what YOUR friends have to say about a certain restaurant over what a stranger has to say.

• Toolbar: Facebook plans to add a toolbar that it will encourage other websites to use. My guess is that “Like” and “Share” will be included on the toolbar so that you can give instant feedback to your profile of what you’re digging at that moment. In absence of this addition, you could have simply copied a link and posted it to your Facebook profile if you really felt the need to express your love for a certain site.

• Activity Stream: Of course, all those things that you are in fact digging have to go somewhere, so a mini-stream will be created to display all of that activity. In other words, this will probably lead to another Facebook makeover with more clutter.

• Docs: In a final move to ensure its worldwide takeover, Facebook seems to have teamed with Microsoft to take down Google Docs. The idea is practically identical to Google Docs with users using their Facebook accounts to create, manipulate, and share Microsoft office documents. With Facebook accounts known for being hacked and Facebook itself always changing their layout, I wouldn’t want to use these docs to work on an important project. Read the rest of this entry »

Without a doubt, social media is the biggest thing to hit the advertising industry since television, the huge difference between the two mediums being that TV was a one-way conversation, advertisers hawking their wares. Social media, on the other hand, has brought two words into the relationship not previously uttered – conversation and content. Social media has also given the consumer a voice – a powerful voice – and a means to use that voice. The conventional advertiser/consumer relationship is dead, never to be resurrected.

This is not to say that traditional advertising is dead. Rather, television, radio, magazines, and newspapers have transformed their businesses to take advantage of the synergies available between the various platforms. But, you already know all of this…

However, this new space has also opened up deep legal issues in the areas of privacy, intellectual property, identity theft, defamation, and self-incrimination. While privacy has long been the online community’s main watch word, identity theft is surpassing privacy due to the fact that it stems from a users lack of privacy online. Most online users are aware of the trade-offs brought about by online shopping, social media sites, and the costs associated with free content; it’s pay to play, and your privacy is the currency of choice. Buy a book from Amazon? Name, address, telephone number, email address, and a record of your purchases are all stored. Facebook account? Whatever you write in your profile will be utilized by marketers to target you with advertising; it’s the cost of admission. So, if you list one of your interests as “playing guitar,” you’ll see ads for local and national guitar retailers, music vendors, recording studios, and the like. Additionally, they know your demographic, geographic, and psychographic information, and probably the web-surfing habits associated with your IP address. Read the rest of this entry »

The last couple of blogs I posted covered applications on Facebook, and how these applications basically were a trade-off between your privacy as a Facebook user (and that of all your friends) and using the application.  Thus, if you wanted to play Mafia Wars on Facebook, Mafia Wars will be able to access your personal information to use at their discretion. The Huffington Post describes the “loss of privacy” in a great article:

The frightening penetration of Facebook, My-space, Twitter and other virtual social communities adds a lot of leverage to this loss of privacy. What you say or write in confidence to someone, can possibly be advertised by that person or worse, by a hacker, and exposed to the whole 200 million users of Facebook or the 1 billion users of the Internet!

The Facebook Application and Privacy settings are found here. Per the agreement with the application: Read the rest of this entry »