Curious as to what articles your friends find interesting on Facebook? Worry no more! Facebook and the Wall Street Journal have added a new feature that make it possible to view what articles are popular among your friends. All of the responses that I’ve seen related to this news have revolved around how this is a violation of user privacy and that Facebook is yet again crossing the line. This time I have to disagree and say that this is probably one of the more useful tools I’ve seen to leverage the “social graph.”
The new tool leverages the Loomia SeenThis application. Once you’ve added the application, any site that uses the Loomia tool will be able to track what articles you are reading and share them with your friends. The real issue arises when your friends start getting alerted that you are reading certain sites that you don’t want them to know that you are visiting. For the time being, Loomia controls what sites can join and there is a low risk of your friend getting alerted that you just visited an “adult oriented” site.
As some developers pointed out last weekend, the ability to extend Facebook to other websites has been available prior to the launch of the new javascript library. It just wasn’t publicly announced. The trend of extending functionality that we see within Facebook to external websites is going to continue over the next few months and I wouldn’t be surprised to start hearing more reports of shocked users that feel this is a violation of their privacy.
In my opinion, social functionality improves the overall experience on any website. Do you feel that these types of applications are a violation of your privacy or do they improve your overall experience on the site?
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From the SeenThis FAQ:2. How can I see friends' names when it says "Popular with 5 friends"?You can't. We want to let you know what's popular in your crowd, but we also want to respect people's privacy — SeenThis? shows recommendations in ways that are not individually identifiable. If your friends want to call attention to something specifically, they can always share it with you, or post it to their Facebook profile with the "Share It" button. For more information on our privacy features, please see our Privacy FAQ and Policy.
Comment by Eric P — January 30, 2008 @ 8:21 am
From the SeenThis FAQ:
2. How can I see friends' names when it says "Popular with 5 friends"?
You can't. We want to let you know what's popular in your crowd, but we also want to respect people's privacy — SeenThis? shows recommendations in ways that are not individually identifiable. If your friends want to call attention to something specifically, they can always share it with you, or post it to their Facebook profile with the "Share It" button. For more information on our privacy features, please see our Privacy FAQ and Policy.
Comment by Eric P — January 30, 2008 @ 9:21 am
[...] in January I wrote about the launch of a Facebook tool that enabled you to track which articles your friends were reading on [...]
Pingback by Have You Seen This? - The Unofficial Facebook Blog — April 2, 2008 @ 1:39 pm
[...] The Wall Street Journal is bringing its content into the Facebook platform with its launch of the WSJ Social app, available free of charge during its first month thanks to exclusive launch advertiser Dell. [...]
Pingback by Wall Street Journal Content Comes To Facebook — September 20, 2011 @ 12:43 pm