Justin Kistner of Webtrends posted about the new Facebook Like buttons, which are set up so that if someone clicks a like button on your website, they are sharing their personal data on Facebook with your business. The business can then post a message to all the people who chose to like something. In other words, you no longer have to "like" a business page to be reached by that business. As long as you like a product or service the business has, then a business can choose to send a message to you, even if you never liked the business page. And while this is seemingly marketing heaven, it also shows that Facebook once again has been very short-sited (pun intended) in understanding the social implications of their changes.
To be fair, Facebook has definitely capitalized on the psychological manipulation that is involved in using the like button. They undoubtedly reason that if a person chooses to push the like button about a service or product on a business webpage, then they will be accepting of being contacted by that business. There are two problems with that reasoning however:
1. The like button doesn't use double opt-in, which makes it spammy. How we know that Facebook isn't using the double opt-in feature is simple. Once you click the button you've given permission for a business to contact you. But with double opt-in, what should happen is that the like button is pushed, and a small window opens asking the user permission for the business to contact. If and only if the user clicks a second time indicating that it's permissible for the business to contact them, then it actually be said that the like button is not a spam feature.
2. Facebook shares the user's private data with the business. Given how much outcry has already occurred about how Facebook has intended to share user information with third parties, this move demonstrates that Facebook isn't concerned with user private data. The fact is, Facebook has already moved into the gray area of sharing user data with third parties.
And there's a third problem, namely that Facebook is trying to capitalize on the psychological benefits of "like" This is blatantly manipulative on their part, because what it assumes is that just because someone indicates they like something, then that means they wanted to be contacted about it, when in fact they may simply like something, but not want to be contacted. By making that assumption Facebook is risking a lot of user ire and unhappiness. And eventually users will go elsewhere. Justin Kistner thinks Twitter has a good shot at being a contender to Facebook, and I do as well, because there is not near the amount of privacy issues with Twitter as what has occurred with Facebook.
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