Facebook wants to link the world. Excuse me if I find this somewhat disturbing. After reading the recent spate of articles about their new Beacon technology, including PC World's "Facebook's Beacon More Intrusive Than Previously Thought", I am more convinced than ever that we don't need Big Brother; we ARE Big Brother. At first I thought Facebook was just another MySpace wannabe, only a little more exclusive and for a slightly older crowd. It's incredibly ironic, in a time when household shredders are commonplace and identity theft is rampant, that 25 million Facebook users are willing to give a privately-owned, profit-making enterprise permission to collect and sell data about their most personal habits. And Facebook's plan to hook up the world, as recently announced by founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is indeed a brilliant idea. The 20-something Zuckerberg described his company's plan to turn what was just another social-networking site into "the most powerful distribution mechanism that's been created in a generation." $$KA-CHING$$
Every book you buy on Amazon, every tune you download, every site you visit, all this info and more can be available to all your friends and anyone else who cares to know. What a great time to be a stalker. And it's not only Facebook users on which the site collects information. According to their terms and conditions, anyone who merely accesses their site is granting them permission to collect data on them and archive it. And now the story breaks that their Beacon project has been collecting data not just on Facebook users, but also on third-parties who have never even accessed the site.
A Facebook presence could be quite valuable for any individual or company looking to market or
promote themselves, so I can see a library opening a page for publicity and informational purposes. As for me, I decided not to open an account.
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