there’s some egg on your face(book)

funny, the same social networking features that have made facebook take off - like their mini-feed and affordance to know what your friends are doing - made it easier for a petition drive to counter their new beacon feature. facebook reversed today and announced they’re going to an opt-in model instead.

if it weren’t for the negative consequence, this would be a great example of how passionate users get involved in your site and participate in your design. but because it was after the fact, they really blew it. but i’m not sure this feature was ever tenable. inviting discussion before hand wouldn’t have helped. starting opt-in and then switching to opt-out probably would have the same issues. this really was a marketing problem i think, they didn’t predict the vehemence of the reaction in their customer base and they should have.

i wonder how age ranges correlate to this. were the millenials just fine with beacon?

personally, i find the beacon feature onerous because it violates an unspoken need for control of my identity. if i go to a movie, i don’t want all my friends to know automatically. what if i’m embarrassed about a particular kind of movie interest. say, hypothetically, i like chick flicks. the announcement of that fact to my social scene could be devastating or at least generate negative social capital for me. the site really needs to help me manage my identity, not poke holes in it.

(thanks to mike monteiro for the awesome image mashup)

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