Facebook Open Graph Strikingly Similar To The Beacon Of 2007

by Shashank on January 20, 2012

If you haven’t read it already, Facebook has partnered with brands allowing them to host applications for you to use on your Timeline. You can grab some of your favorite apps from the market and add them to your Timeline.

Last year, in its f8 conference, Facebook announced Open Graph and introduced the concept of frictionless sharing. Since then, many apps have been built on this platform that can send your trail of activity back to Facebook. Facebook uses this information to display your activity to your friends in the form of “Alan read XYZ” or “Alan listened to XYZ”, eliminating the need to manually share it in your social circle.

The Open Graph was initially open to a handful of companies like Wall Street Journal and Spotify, but their rate of growth in past few months has prompted Facebook to expand the list and include more apps.

While concerns have been raised in past about the idea of sharing without intimating the user, it appears the issue is no more in anybody’s priority list. People have accepted the fact that if you are going to use any of the Facebook’s features, you will have to kiss “Privacy” goodbye. As you can see, there’s no outcry or mass exodus, or even a hint of outrage from the users, which brings me to the point of the dreaded “Beacon”.

If you have been early to Facebook, say in 2007, you might have read or heard about the Beacon. The feature that was the brain child of Mark Zuckerberg was introduced on Facebook in November 2007.

There were no warnings, no intimation to users as to how it would work, or how it would put their privacy at work, but just a vague idea that user’s activity on third party sites would be beamed back to Facebook.

Sounds familiar(Open Graph?).

The Concept Hasn’t Changed At All

With each passing month, right after f8, it was becoming apparent that Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of an open internet was coming true. All of the social apps have witnessed growth of mammoth proportions. Spotify doubled its users base few days after it hooked up with Facebook.

Beacon tried to do exactly the same thing, but somehow the world wasn’t ready in 2007 . The core ideology behind Beacon’s implementation was that third party websites could seamlessly integrate themselves with the walled garden, which up until that point was an impossible feat to achieve.

Sites were required to embed Beacon into their site code which then recorded Facebook members‘ activities and proactively broadcast off-Facebook activities to the user’s social circle or onto their News feeds. Though users had the option to opt-out of this feature, many were caught off-guard as it was made default opt-in.

Developer Nate Weiner recounts his experience with the Beacon.

So here I am, burning some brain cells and taking some time to relax playing a game on Kongregate, when a little window pops up in the corner of my screen and says “Kongregate is sending this to your Facebook profile: Nate played Desktop Tower Defense 1.5 at Kongregate.” Which immediately elicited a “Hellll no” from my mouth.

Maybe what shocked me was the way it was worded, essentially saying that Kongregate was sending the data without even asking my permission (even though there is a ‘No Thanks’ button in the corner) but needless to say, I was not too thrilled about my surfing habits showing up on my Facebook profile.

Essentially, Weiner had experienced “FRICTIONLESS SHARING”, which was driving the Beacon. Adding to the woes, Facebook made it unreachable for users to reset the settings.

This discussion brings me to the Open Graph applications. Once you allow an app to share your activity on Facebook, they gain absolute control over your account leaving behind a trail of activity on your friends’ news feed. Yes, you can sill switch off the feature, but has Facebook made it easy to do so? I guess in my wildest dreams.

Behavioral Advertising

Beacon perhaps coined the term “Behavioral advertising”, which allowed advertisers to target individuals based on personal information or behavior. According to Gigaom’s Nov 6, 2007 article, where Om Malik writes, “Part of the engine powering this new ad system is called Beacon, which takes data from 44 web destinations and mashes it up with Facebook’s internal information to help build more focused advertising messages.”

All that the websites had to do was to insert a piece of JavaScript and transmit back the information to Facebook. Facebook would then use it to target ads on the site.

Now, if you look at what Facebook is trying to do with the Timeline and the new social apps, you’ll realize that much of that effort strikes an undeniable resemblance to what Beacon was trying to achieve. It’s just that it’s a totally different premise now: instead of partnered sites, you have partnered apps.

The web has converged onto Facebook and much like your activity on third party sites; you will now interact with apps instead. What is also worth noting is that Facebook had adopted a similar approach to rolling out the feature. With Beacon, the company had tied-up with 44 partner sites and with Open-Graph it has forged an alliance with about 80(and growing) companies.

By restricting partner apps within the perimeter of Facebook, the company has managed to counter most of allegations Beacon had to face. Users’ browsing experience outside Facebook remains intact, while at the same time anything that is done within the wall is instantly consumed and shared by the company.

With flurry of apps right after it opened the gates yesterday; all of a sudden it appears we would have an internet built within an internet. Everything that you currently do on the internet: read news, listen to songs, play games or even book a ticket is made available on Facebook, which is exactly what is needed for Open Graph to succeed.

The End Of Beacon

With public outcry and lawsuits filed against it, Facebook had to painfully withdraw the feature a year later. It agreed to set up a $9.5 million fund for a nonprofit foundation that would support online privacy, safety and security. As PC World notes, Facebook never agreed to its wrongdoings and the settlement provided no relief to the users.

Will something similar happen to Open Graph?

Perhaps Never. Facebook is too big a giant now and users are accustomed to the idea of public sharing. At least no seems to be complaining yet. Facebook lost the battle in 2007, but has comprehensively won the war in 2012.