November 12 2007
Facebook Beacon
Facebook has added the Beacon a new facility to
enable businesses to gain access to viral distribution across its tens of millions of users
The new Beacon facility in Facebook offers the ability to
tap into the millions of users on Facebook with just 3 lines of code. According
to Facebook it’s simple to do here’s how they describe it on the Beacon site
pages
Simply determine which user actions you would like publish to Facebook and add a few lines of code to your web page. Facebook Beacon actions include purchasing a product, signing up for a service, adding an item to a wish list, and more. When a user performs the action, they will be alerted that your website is sending a story to their profile and have a chance to opt out. No additional user action is needed for the story to be published on Facebook, and users remain in control of their information.
Facebook Beacon enables your brand or business to gain access to viral distribution within Facebook. Stories of a user's engagement with your site may be displayed in his or her profile and in News Feed. These stories will act as a word-of-mouth promotion for your business and may be seen by friends who are also likely to be interested in your product. You can increase the number of friends who see these stories with Facebook Social Ads.
User privacy is extremely important to Facebook. We designed Facebook Beacon to enable effortless sharing, but we've also put in features to protect user privacy. When you send an action to Facebook, the user is immediately alerted of the story you wish to publish and will be alerted again when they sign into Facebook. The user can choose to opt out of the story in either instance, but the user doesn't need to take any action for the story to be published on Facebook.
It all sounds too good to be true, have you used it? Tell us what you think?
