Business 102 Do Not Lie to your Advertisers
If the news is true, Facebook blew business rule 102 which is “do not ever lie to your advertisers”, just in case, business 101 is customers will get what they want, when they want, at the price they want, business rule 103 is that you never ever lie to your customers.
Facebook needs to go back to business school.
The “Beacon” fallout continues. The New York Times’ Louise Story essentially accuses Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg of lying to her about Beacon’s being “opt-in.” Coca-Cola got a similar impression from the company–and, having learned the truth, is holding off on using the program. Meanwhile, Facebook’s spokesman attempts to explain to the NYT’s Louise Story what Zuckerberg really meant–and makes matters worse. Source: Silicon Alley Insider
While most business managers get this, we think this is the first time that anyone has put out a security advisory on the subject as well, but Computer Associates thought that Facebook beacon is dangerous enough to warn of it as a possible security issue.
Facebook has definitely taken the wrong tactic to use when dealing with an advertising captive audience. While it is not surprising for someone to lie about thing, what is usually damaging to the reputation of a company is to lie about something.
Users can be very brutal about how they will deal with things like this, and the avoidance of Facebook might be the right thing to do until they step up to the plate, and tell everyone what they are dong, what they did, and what they are doing to fix it.
This ought to kill off the momentum of Facebook for a while, and it will be interesting to see if anyone bothers to go back.
The good part about this is that both advertisers and users have given a definite answer to the problem and that the answer is no unless it is a specific OPT IN kind of advertising. Much like the do not call registry, for the consumer and in the longer run, this should end up being a good thing.
The other good thing, advertisers now have a line in the sand, one they should not cross if they do not want to be implicated in the schemes of short sighted companies.
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