Facebook to Make Targeted Ads More Transparent For Users | Digital – Advertising Age

Finally FB agrees to use the AdChoices icon.

Facebook is about to get more transparent in the way it targets advertising at its users.

The social network has agreed to start displaying the little blue “AdChoices” icon on its display ads served through its FBX ad exchange after months of public and private complaints from ad agencies and advertisers.Facebooks AdChoices icon

The icon — intended to provide enhanced notice of behavioral targeting and allow users to opt-out — will look the same as the one seen across the web, with one big caveat. Rather than appearing directly on FBX display ads, the symbol will show up only when users mouse over the gray “x” displayed above the ads shown on Facebooks right rail.

via Facebook to Make Targeted Ads More Transparent For Users | Digital – Advertising Age.

Amazon’s and Facebook’s Ad Privacy Practices Irk Ad Agencies | Digital – Advertising Age

Two of the biggest publishers on the web don’t use the advertising industry’s standardized ad-privacy program, and it’s a problem for even the largest digital-media buyers.

Facebook and Amazon both offer targeted display advertising that can sometimes incorporate behavioral data from third parties. However, while nearly every other relevant media firm, ad network and ad-data firm either uses the industry’s self-regulatory Ad Choices program or operates one that can be easily integrated with it, Facebook and Amazon do not.

via Amazon’s and Facebook’s Ad Privacy Practices Irk Ad Agencies | Digital – Advertising Age.

Why would anyone apply for a job on Facebook?

The Facebook Job Board Is Here: Recruiting Will Never Look The Same – Forbes

Facebook announced its long-awaited job board this morning, ushering in a new era of online recruiting and, eventually, what’s likely to be an important new source of revenue for the company. After a yearlong “Social Jobs Partnership” with the U.S. Department of Labor and other government agencies, the company released the Social Jobs Partnership application today, an interactive job board that aggregates 1.7 million openings from recruiting companies already working on the platform, including Work4 Labs, BranchOut, Jobvite, DirectEmployers and Monster.com.

I don’t think it’s much of an issue to be fair – jobvite is scary asking for facebook details (plus it never worked very well) and really most people are friends on facebook with work colleagues. You’d want ot be very careful that apps and boards didn’t publicise your activity and we all know how Facebook treat privacy controls…

via The Facebook Job Board Is Here: Recruiting Will Never Look The Same – Forbes.

cool new browser plugin

Thanks Dave for sending me a link to cooliris which is a great browser plugin – I love Flickr and now with the help of cooliris browsing photostreams is much more fun and so much easier – cooliris works on hundreds of sharing and web 2.0 websites, including the likes of Bebo, Facebook, Friendster, Google, Yahoo and Photobucket oh and not forgetting YouTube
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Burger King bribes people to ditch Facebook friends

Burger King US has released a new Facebook application that gives users a free Whopper when they delete 10 friends from their profile page.

Brilliant. Although disappointingly it only works if you’re in the US…

Usually when a friend is removed on Facebook, no announcement is made, however the Burger King application creates an update to inform the deleted friend that they have been “sacrificed for a free Whopper” on their wall.

Over 50,000 friends have been sacrificed so far according the website whoppersacrifice.com where you can also download the Facebook application.

Social vs Professional

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I don’t want everyone I know to know everyone else that I know.
It’s like when you split up from someone and you suddenly lose a group of friends because they were better friends with your now ex partner.
Imagine this in the online world. It would be a nightmare. You have a spat with someone in the office and all of a sudden everyone in your social network is also affected or vice versa.

I use LinkedIn for my professional network and it works well. I use Facebook, Friendster, Thingbox and AIMPages and any number of others for social networking. Essentially whenever I get an invite I join one and when I see one I want to test or evaluate I join it and invite my friends. What I tend not to do is invite the same group of people to all of them.

There are some people with whom I get on with really well on my social networks that I would never put in my professional network the results would be far too unpredictable. Likewise there are people on my professional network I would never invite onto Facebook.

Anyway back to the point. LinkedIn is considering opening their platform to developers if you believe techcrunch and others, or likely will create an app for facebook. I’m struggling to see the market. I know in an ideal world everything would be interoperable but in the real world I think it would cause more problems than it would solve.

Now of course some software manufacturers have entered the fray. Notably IBM’s Lotus Connections which has a delicious style social bookmarking element, a blogging element – despite most companies looking at ways of reigning in the blogosphere rather than promoting it- and profiles.