Facebook's Instant Personalization: An Ode to Bobby Brown

I've had several emails regarding Facebook's "Social Plugins" and "Instant Personalization".  Several of you have expressed concerns with Facebook sharing your information.  While I am usually one of the first to jump on the security bandwagon, I have yet to find this all that troublesome, and - in fact - I have enjoyed it.

First "Social Plugins"

From Facebook:  Social plugins are simple tools that can be "dropped" into any website to provide people with personalized and social experiences. Using social plugins, websites everywhere can give you more ways to experience the web with your friends--from letting you form connections on these sites with your favorite movies or restaurants to showing you the most popular content based on what is being shared among your friends. Rather than seeing popular stories, products or reviews from people you don't know, you'll now see content that matters to you the most--from your friends--displayed prominently.

Social plugins include:

- "Like" or "Recommend" buttons: Click to publicly share and connect with content you find interesting.
- Activity Feed: What your friends are liking, commenting on or sharing on a site.
- Recommendations: Most liked content among your friends on a site.

And "Instant Personalization":

From Facebook:  How does instant personalization work on websites participating in the pilot program?

We have established a small pilot program with an exclusive set of partners—currently yelp.com, Microsoft Docs.com, and pandora.com—to offer a personalized experience as soon as you visit. These partners have been given access to public information on Facebook (e.g., names, friend lists and interests and likes) to personalize your experience.

When you first visit any of these three partner sites while logged into Facebook, you’ll see a blue bar appear at the top of the site letting you know that your experience is being personalized. You can choose to learn more, remove the personalized experience or click "x" to remove the bar. If you don't want your experience personalized on these limited number of sites, you can opt out by clicking here. You can also navigate there by going to 'Account' -> 'Privacy settings' -> 'Applications and Websites' -> 'Instant Personalization Pilot Program'

So, I visit a website which has a Facebook social plugin.  My information - name, pictures, contact information, etc - is not shared with the company.  Instead what is happening is Facebook has a feature on their site.  Facebook is connecting with your account, and Facebook personalizes your experience for you on the site you are visiting.  So the personalization is by Facebook, through Facebook, with Facebook - a site you've already published all your information, pictures, and strange thoughts on anyway. 

Or ... I'm logged into Facebook (and for it to work, I have to actually be "logged into" Facebook) and then also open another window to visit a site that has the instant personalization feature.  A notice that "instant personalization is on" will appear, and I can either let it personalize or I can opt to turn it off.  In this situation, I'm in charge, and my information is being shared only with a site that I have chosen to visit while logged into Facebook.   

If you trust Facebook with your 3AM musings, why not trust them to make recommendations on sites you have chosen to visit.  It's that simple.  

However, "if ego trips aren't [your] thing," and you're still concerned with the new "Instant Personalization," I have attached Samuel Axon's article to help you disable the feature.

Of course, I also reserve the right to turn it off if I find it doesn't do what I expect it to do, because - as Bobby Brown would say - "That's my prerogative."





Social Media and the Pea by Alice Ann Williams is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.socialmediaandthepea.blogspot.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.socialmediaandthepea.blogspot.com/.