November 11, 2007

Facebook Under Fire for Advertising Change That Includes Subscribers

Just days after Facebook unveiled plans for a new advertising network that relies on user-provided details about themselves for marketers to target their ads, some legal experts said the system may violate privacy laws. William McGeveran, association professor of law at the University of Minnesota Law School in Minneapolis, noted in a blog post that the new ad initiative only asks users in general whether they want to share information -- not whether they want their name and picture used in an ad for a product. The new Facebook system will serve up so-called Social Ads, which combines actions taken by a users' friends -- like a purchase, review or a service -- with an advertiser's message. These ads will appear in a user's news feeds as sponsored content or in the ad space on the site, according to Facebook.

New Facebook Ad Techniques Raise Privacy Concerns, PC World, November 10, 2007.