InteractiveSalsa.com

So Facebook puts a tracking beacon on its site that gives it information about its users to others. And, people don’t like it. For a site that should be all about the User, this is a sizable PR ooops. To be fair, this beacon stuff isn’t unique to Facebook. I wish I had a list of other sites, but I don’t. Although, I would expect it to hold some well-known names. Zuckerberg continues to learn; in this case, remember your roots, Mark.

Here is some info from PC World:

On Dec. 5, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized in his blog for the Beacon program, which tracked the purchases of Facebook users on third-party websites such as Overstock.com and Fandango.com. The information about those purchases was then pushed to friends of that user on their respective Facebook homepages. As an example, if one person booked a movie ticket on Fandango, his or her friends might get a notification that showed his purchase.

Even the Harvard Business sent this to my inbox (do you think they even have Facebook accounts? Probably, by now)…

Why Facebook Beacon Will Not Stick With Users
Misiek Piskorski

This week, Facebook suffered its second product roll-out gaffe of the year, when user outcry over its new Beacon advertising feature reached such a level that CEO Mark Zuckerberg was forced to issue a public apology for the way the company handled the launch. Last year, the company suffered a similar humiliation when its NewsFeed product earned the ire of users.

Facebook apparently hasn’t yet learned that online social networks are successful only when they provide features that simultaneously pass two tests:

* First, features cannot disclose any information that people would never disclose offline. If a feature fails to pass this test, users will leave the site or engage in vehement protest.
* Second, features need to help people broadcast information that friends or other recipients will find helpful. If a feature passes this test, users are guaranteed to take it up in droves. Otherwise, people will opt out or ignore the feature.

A couple days ago ABC O&O’s (owned and operated) launched a new website template/design. See one at http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/ They feature a larger video player that has some YouTube-like functionality. Although, I think some users may struggle with the functionality of the player.  The Spot Center is interesting; we’ll have to see what more they do with it.

This comes a few weeks after ABCNews.com launched a new design.

A little follow up on my last post about Li Ka-shing’s $60M investment into Facebok.  The headline pretty much says it all.  Read more…

TOM Group shrs jump, says no investment in Facebook

My initial thought is that this doesn’t really matter.  There is still potential for synergy b/w Facebook and Tom, and other entities for that matter.  Lots of potential; we’ll see what actually unfolds.  It was probably a good statement for them to make for legal/clarity reasons.

This is a big deal for Facebook and its competitors. Facebook now has an investment from Bill Gates and Li Ka-shing, two of the most influential business people today, and tomorrow. Forget all other details. With the insight and capital behind these two names, the sky could be the limit for Facebook. If you are a Facebook competitor, your world view just changed. Not because of what is, but because of what could be. Now with that said, investors like Gates and Ka-shing place bets in many places and there is always a chance the Facebook bet could flop; however, with the resources behind these two, it is hard to think that would happen.

Li Ka-shing and Bill Gates are both self made men that amassed a huge fortune and sphere of influence. Warren Buffet is another name that comes to mind along these lines. They all are, however, very different from each other. Ka-shing has a very interesting (we could say legendary) past. You can get much more depth elsewhere (read Sterling Seagrave’s “Lords of the Rim” for starters; “The Soong Dynasty” is another good one by Seagrave), but here is a small snapshot: he fled China due to the seismic political shift brought about by Mao and Communist China, he made his first fortune selling plastic flowers to foreign (U.S.) markets, he has one of the tightest and most formidable (human) networks in the world (big back story there), he has an impressive business empire today (that makes you wonder what is not visible on the surface). His son, Richard Li, went to Standford and made his mark as the head of Pacific Century CyberWorks, once a Hong Kong Internet high flyer that has experienced a rough ride since the end of the dotcom boom (more on Richard at the Economist - here, here, here).

I don’t want to overplay a single investment made by an entity under someone — Li — that makes many many investments. But in the world of Internet Tech, the Facebook game just got much, much more interesting… because of what Gates and Li could bring to the table.

Google?

(source) More on the Facebook/Ka-shing story at AllThingsD…

Facebook Nabs $60 Million Investment from Li Ka-shing

Update:

Also, more at Mashable, the Guardian, and I am sure soon-to-be many other places…

Did you jump online and buy all your stuff on Cyber Monday?  It sounds like a bunch of people did.

Cyber Monday Traffic Increases 26 Percent in 2007 

U.S. traffic on Cyber Monday increased 26 percent compared to2006, Hitwise reported today.

But did merchants make more $$ ??   Looks like they did!  …so we can call it Cyber Black Monday.  (unless they used Yahoo)

Black Monday — when everyone is supposed to logon to cyberspace and click “checkout” — was a big day. Big enough that it crashed Yahoo’s system. Sounds like the World Series, and then some.

More:

Yahoo apologises for Black Monday fiasco

Yahoo is attempting to placate members of its Small Business Merchant programme after an outage left many sellers unable to process orders on the busiest online shopping day of the year.

The programme allows users to set up and maintain online stores and process payments.

But problems began at 6am US Pacific time when Yahoo said that systems which power the service went down.

As a result, merchants were unable to process orders and users were unable to make purchases.

Yahoo had restored the service by 1pm, but transactions remained slow to process. The service was not up to normal speed until 12 hours after the outage.

It was not too long ago that Netflix rolled out the ability for people to stream movies from its website, eliminating the wait for DVDs to arrive via mail (they do a great job at that, BTW).  You will now be able to watch “Heroes” at netflix.com a day after it airs on NBC.  How’s that for NBC getting out of the TV box… this sounds like the first of more to come.  And, makes me think: could Netflix rival iTunes, Amazon, Joost, Hulu in ways we may not have considered.  Speaking of Hulu, this move is kind of interesting with that respect.  And of course there is always Blockbuster, yawn (i still want my $2 — still bitter over late fees).  Sounds like the beginning of what could become Netflix 2.0, if they expand the concept a lot more.  They have a good brand for it.

Netflix to offer ‘Heroes’ online
NBC Universal agrees to ‘next day’ episode service

Here is a sneak peek at the new abcnews.com ABC goes into the user feedback and why they made some of the design/layout choices.

More @ IAB: Internet Advertising Revenues in Q3 ’07 Surpass $5.2 Billion, Setting New High

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) announced that Internet advertising revenues exceeded $5.2 billion for the third quarter of 2007, representing yet another historic high for a quarter and a $1.1 billion increase, or 25.3 percent, over Q3 2006.