Facebook User Posts to be republished for Advertisement

After the rumors that Facebook is going offline starting March 15, 2011, Facebook has another issue a thorny issue.

Another feature may surprise Facebook users. Facebook users who are fond of checking in to a store and clicking the "like" button for a brand may soon find these actions retransmitted on their friend's pages as a "Sponsored Story" paid for advertisers.- NEW YORK (AP)

If this is likely to be possible, currently there is no way for users to decline this feature. 

The new, promoted posts would keep the same privacy setting that the original posting had. So if you limit your check-ins to a specific group of friends, only these same friends would see the "Sponsored Story" version later.

According to Facebook this feature lets advertisers promote word-of-mouth recommendations that people already made on the site. They play up things people do on the site that might get lost in the mass of links, photos, status updates and other content users share on the world's largest social network. 

The new, promoted posts would keep the same privacy setting that the original posting had. So if you limit your check-ins to a specific group of friends, only these same friends would see the "Sponsored Story" version later.

The promoted content will appear on the right side of users' home pages, not in their main news feed. That's where regular ads, friend requests and other content are located.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center regarded it to be "subtle and misleading" and a thing user should really object. He said that  in this case the company is making money off a person's name or likeness without their consent. Involving users in advertisements with out their consent is an awful issue for the social site.

Another top social site, Twitter already offers advertisers something similar, they call it "promoted tweets". These are Twitter posts paid for by advertisers to show up in search results and top of popular topic lists on the site. But far more different, while Twitter's ads are written by the companies that pay for them, Facebook's sponsored stories are created by users.

Both features of these sites are ways of making advertisement easier. Than making up a virtual billboard of advertisements, this would be of less effort.


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