Shooting at Bubbles

I just saw this come through from the team over at The Next Web. It appears that Facebook might have figured out it’s next avenue to increase their advertising revenue.

Your web history.

Alex Wilhelm puts it this way:

Facebook wants to improve their advertising targeting, but needs more information to do so. Where will this new information come from? Your web history.

[....]

This week, at Facebook’s F8 developer event, Facebook is expected to roll out a new advertising system and series of social buttons. These buttons will mimic Twitter and Digg buttons that are ubiquitous online.

Users can click the Facebook button while off-Facebook, signaling the giant with new information about their preferences that will then be fed into algorithms for advanced, and dead-on, advert targeting. More and better information will allow Facebook to boost its CPM and CPC rates significantly.

Regardless of whether Alex thinks that this could be done well I’m more inclined to go with his point that this could land Facebook in court if not done right

From what we understand, Facebook will note when a user makes an action on a third-party website, and use that information. That makes the collection of data very active, not passive. If instead Facebook sets up the buttons to note any logged in Facebook user, and save that data hit without alerting them, we are going to see class-action lawsuits.

If history is any indicator I wouldn’t trust Facebook further than I can spit in a headwind and wouldn’t be surprised if they go with the second option and risk the lawsuits.

Well Facebook I have just gotten one step closer to deleting my account.

Anyone else?