Socializing With Your Friends Amid The Commercial Clutter.(The Technologist; Technology)

Byline: Sarah Elkins

Greg Benedetto believes in the old adage "the customer comes first." He worked for Canada's HMV record chain for two years as a teenager and, in that time, learned a thing or two about getting people to buy things. "A customer who is treated well probably won't say anything," he says. "But a customer who is treated poorly will tell everyone they know." And that is exactly what Benedetto plans to do if Facebook's new targeted ad campaign gets out of hand. Already Benedetto has invited all 562 of his Facebook friends to join the group Stand Up! Don't Let Facebook Invade Your Social Life With Ads!

What's got Benedetto worked up is a statement from social-networking site Facebook earlier this month indicating that it would make data on its 30.6 million members available to advertisers, who want to tailor ads to members' hobbies and preferences. Under the new "Social Ads" program, anyone who, for example, lists an interest in travel will be served up ads for cheap fares and hotels. Facebook wouldn't comment, but on the firm's blog, ads project manager Leah Pearlman defends the practice. "Engaging with businesses and buying things are part of your everyday life," she says. The new system will work to "make ads more appealing" to members.

Social-networking sites are a potentially rich vein for advertisers. (MySpace also recently began supporting targeted ads.) Facebook, which recently sold a portion of the company to Microsoft, maintains that it will not sell personal information directly to marketers. Instead, it will compile users' "social actions" -- edits they make to their profiles and information on the other sites they visit -- and sell marketers the option of reaching out to members who, by their actions, fit certain demographics. Will Facebook members, who have a more personal relation to the site than, say, Google mail or Yahoo search-engine users, abandon the site?

Benedetto and other activists say yes. "Companies want to know what they can sell to a male who is 22 and living in Toronto and reads certain books and listens to certain music," says Benedetto, a 22-year-old Toronto native. "But when it comes to using my identity or my friends' identities to hawk a product, that's crossing the line."

History, however, suggests that the rebellion ...