14 DAY TRIAL // Last fall, Facebook was excited with the launch of a new feature which showed friends what the latest online purchases of Facebook subscribers were. Beacon could have been a fun way to share one's preferences, without personally telling everyone in the network about the latest movie he had bought online. But the invasive approach of Facebook turned Beacon into a failure. And this because users were not enabled with the possibility to opt-out the system. And so, items that were supposed to be Christmas presents were seen, long before Christmas, by all the friends in the list and possibly by the receiver.
Some were so outraged by the fact that their holidays or other occasions were ruined that they decided to take legal actions against Facebook and the companies that provided with the products, agreeing to be part of the Beacon program. A few days ago, 19 people filed a collective lawsuit against Facebook, Blockbuster, Fandango, Hotwire, Sta Travel, Overstock, Zappo and Gamefly, claiming damages for all the good moments Facebook's Beacon ruined. Also, users claimed that these companies had disclosed information that they did not agree to be made public, which is against privacy laws.
Beacon faced criticism from its very launch, when a civic organization started a protest under the "Facebook must protect my privacy" tag. The online petition signed by hundreds of users made Facebook reconsider and introduce an option that would allow the social network to display details about purchases made on third party websites only after having obtained confirmation. Also, the company introduced the opt-out possibility for those who totally disliked Beacon.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's CEO, admitted himself that the approach of the company was not appropriate. "We've made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we've made even more with how we've handled them. We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it," he said.