14 DAY TRIAL // Ok, so you got your Facebook, you got your Coca-Cola partnership that was going swell. What would you do, if you had an option to continue the association when confronted with upcoming changes? I don't know about you, but I would most definitely ask my good friend and partner about the options he would consider to be the best and try to work out the problems from there. After all, we are talking about one of the top brands in the world, a brand that's even more famous than Jesus Christ.
But no, Facebook execs decided not to go the easy profitable way, but instead they opted for the long and painful route. And it's not just Coca-Cola, others are bailing out as well, like Overstock, while Travelocity is having second thoughts about remaining on board. What's the issue of the three companies above? As Erick Schonfeld puts it, the "lack of confidence from the major advertising partners Facebook launched with is coming after it revised its policy to make Beacon opt-in instead of opt-out." It looks like a no-brainer to me, but I'm not currently at the helm of any major networking site, so I wouldn't actually know better.
Erick Schonfeld, of TechCrunch.com, notes that, according to his sources, "Beacon partners transmit data to Facebook in bulk about members who visit their site. This is true even for those who opt out of Beacon by clicking on 'No Thanks' when asked if the data can be shared with Facebook. The data is sent anyway. Facebook clarifies that it does not do anything with this opted-out data, and in fact deletes it from its servers. But the deletion occurs on Facebook's servers, not the advertisers'." You needn't worry all that much, the data is being sent by the Beacon partners connected to every single visitor to their sites, regardless if they are or are not members of Facebook, including detailed user behavior. Did I say don't worry? Just pretend you've read "It is actually a whole lot worse" and excuse my negligence.
I think that this might just be it, the explanation why the partner sites are considering opting out themselves at the moment. Besides Facebook, they too are going to take the fall, in case something nasty appears. And you never want to loose your credibility in front of your clients. Never.