I Almost Joined Facebook, But Don’t Work For Free

I had been mulling over joining the community at Facebook for most of the past year, however, their recent unveiling of new marketing methodology/technology (Beacon) saved me the bother.

I don’t work for free, so I do not feel much like playing to role of marketing intern (you know, standing on the side of the street in a chicken suit with a large sign) for Facebook’s 23 year old helmsman. Facebook is embracing one of the most intrusive marketing methods the Net has seen so far. Now, every member will act like an advertising billboard! Whoo-hoo!

I want even more cookies and monitoring of my personal online habits! I want advertisers to fool people I know into thinking I actually use crappy products and shop at unsecured websites and buy things from companies who think customer service means doing you the favor of letting you buy their stuff!

OK, now back to reality. I do NOT want all of those things. And I have no intention of encouraging friends to deal with such things either.

By default, you will have opted into what is basically endorsing brands when you sign up for Facebook. You can read more about it on the Mail & Guardian site (yes I like my news perspectives to be global). Author Anja Merret lays it all down for you in a short piece entitled With Facebook You Get Without Asking.

Sure, I don’t mind looking at advertising in exchange for free services. What I do mind is letting some kid’s website (I don’t care how big it is) using my PC for invasive marketing that will annoy the hell out of me and all my friends I convince to join the community. I especially dislike the unethical sort that believes you should sneakily make people engage in this by default and hope they are lucky enough to figure out that they can opt out of it.

I don’t intend to do your marketing work for you Facebook. You almost had me, but alas, someone with a conscience caught you gloating about how your advertising equivalent of a colonoscopy was the best thing since the Gutenberg’s press.

Permission marketing isn’t dead yet, Facebook. You might want to return to the drawing board. You aren’t changing marketing for the next 100 years…unless you mean making it even more unethical, more intrusive, more annoying and a greater bandwidth hog than it already is.

That’s just what I want, more things I need to click. Besides, if my friends want to know where I shop they need only ask. In fact, if a place or product or service is so good that I wanted to tell everyone about it, I would…probably on a blog or via emails.

Or, perhaps via a bulletin on MySpace—where most of my friends hang out anyway.