Filed under: Consumer experience, Internet, Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), eBay (EBAY), Marketing and advertising, IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI), Sony Corp ADR (SNE), Blockbuster Inc ‘A’ (BBI), CBS Corp ‘B’ (CBS), Comcast Cl’A’ (CMCSA), Expedia Inc (EXPE), News Corp’B’ (NWS)

Facebook has had a breakout year — BloggingStocks probably should have listed the social networking site among our Hot Products of 2007. It sold a small stake to Microsoft for $240 million, and its success with encouraging third-party add-ons forced News Corp (NYSE: NWS)’s MySpace and even the mighty Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) to change tactics. But as Tom Taulli and The Wall Street Journal addressed yesterday, Facebook’s stock with privacy advocates is dropping over its über-creepy Beacon targeted advertising method.

On Facebook, you’re as private as you are modest. You have the option of laying bare your bookshelf, Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) queue and purse contents for all your friends and neighbors to pan through, or you can leave all that business blank and keep your fancies as mysterious and enigmatic as you are, you unique snowflake. My profile tells users — not to mention advertisers — that I like to put on CNBC and dust my marriage-prohibitive record collection. Consequently, I’ve got E*Trade (NASDAQ: ETFC) and the occasional ironic t-shirt vendor after me, greeting me with animated ads whenever I log in.

By now, web users have learned to deal with e-tailers and ad-serving scripts tracking their behavior, realizing that oft-maligned cookies effectively just save you the effort of typing your password. This is reasonable targeted marketing: I pay nothing for a service, and in exchange, some vendor imagines it got a little closer to a selling me something.

Where Facebook and all the participating advertisers that sail with her cross the icky line is with Beacon. Beacon goes beyond serving up targeted ads — it takes my purchase information from participating advertisers and broadcasts it endorsement-style to all my Facebook friends, as well as any others in my network who, for whatever illness or boredom, feel like probing my Facebook essence.

Facebook’s advertisers page says such ads “act as a word-of-mouth promotion.” The idea is that my friends would be sooo enamored of my consumer choices that they would trod off cash in hand to the exact same vendor (now there’s an absurd ad waiting to happen — “Barry bought a round lot of Intuitive Surgical through E*Trade — Won’t you make the switch today?”).

We all get the concept, but I’d rather choose when to actually use my word of mouth to let my friends know, or more crucial, to keep stumm if I’m renting something randy Steel Magnolias from Blockbuster (NYSE: BBI). Facebook users can tweak their privacy settings to opt out of the Beacon promos, but you have to do it site by site, and you must renew your decline every week (this is according to an instructional movie at MoveOn.org — I haven’t run into the Beacon service yet because I don’t do much online shopping). It’s likely that difficult to opt out because Facebook and Beacon advertisers know how averse folks would be to opt in.

Users get nothing out of this, mind you. I’d become a de facto pitchman for whatever service chooses to betray my patronage, with no compensation: no store credit, no discount, nothing.

What’s more, how effective can this tactic be? Even if one person heads off to buy the same CD I just enjoyed, how many discriminating friends will write off that snitchy sponsor completely? That I so far know of, participating in the Beacon program are Blockbuster and Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA)’s Fandango ticket service. Feel free to use the comments area to call out any other Facebook sponsors who want to abuse your support through the Beacon program.

UPDATE: A Facebook press release lists participating advertisers as:

• AllPosters.com
• Blockbuster
• Bluefly.com (NASDAQ: BFLY)
• CBS Interactive (CBSSports.com & Dotspotter) (NYSE: CBS)
• eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY)
• ExpoTV
• Fandango
• Gamefly
• IAC InterActiveCorp. (NASDAQ: IACI) sites (CollegeHumor, Busted Tees, iWon, Citysearch, Pronto.com, echomusic)
• Expedia (NASDAQ: EXPE)’s Hotwire
• Joost
• Kiva
• Kongregate
• LiveJournal
• Live Nation (NYSE: LYV)
• Mercantila
• National Basketball Association
• NYTimes.com (NYSE: NYT)
• Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK)
• (RED)
• Redlight
• SeamlessWeb
• Sony Online Entertainment LLC (NYSE: SNE)
• Sony Pictures (NYSE: SNE)
• STA Travel
• The Knot (NASDAQ: KNOT)
• TripAdvisor
• Travel Ticker
• Travelocity
• TypePad
• viagogo
• Vox
• Yelp
• WeddingChannel.com
• Zappos.com

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Share This

Hi Everyone -

Hopefully you’re catching a breather on this holiday.  I’m on 5 hours of sleep and can’t feel my back - peeling potatoes for 18 seems to do that to me.  Any way, while we’re celebrating with our family a year full of things to be thankful for I hope that you are somewhere doing the same; or spending some time reflecting on what you’re thankful for.

Even with the mortgage mess and the tough market I am thankful that I have my health and my family (and of course all of you blown mortgage readers).

Have a great day!

Share This

Share This

Filed under: Rants and raves, Market matters

I’ve been reading about the Great Depression, and I’m thankful I didn’t live through that time. As we watch the market stumble, I think about the miners of Harlan County, Kentucky in the ’30s, struggling to make $1 a day in script to be spent at the company store. One man recounted how he and his father had to ride their horses seven miles back and forth to the mine. Since the mine itself always had water pooled on the floor, they would come out with soaking wet feet. After riding home on a winter’s evening, he would have to chip his father’s feet out of the stirrups. I’m thankful I’ve never had to do that.

I’m thankful I never had to make the decision to send pigs to slaughter while the nation went hungry, in order to drive prices up so that farmers could make a living. I’m glad that I never had to foreclose on a family farm, or have my family farm foreclosed upon. I’m glad that I was never shot during a bloody union/manufacturer confrontation, like between the auto workers and Ford during the depression.

I’m glad I never had a bank fail, taking my hard-earned savings with it. I’m grateful I’ve never had to sell apples on the street corner. I’m glad I never had to qualify for a PWA job by proving I had at least a few teeth, upper and lower.

I’m grateful my German ancestors were allowed to immigrate here in the 1830s. I’m thankful I am allowed to read news that criticizes our government’s economic policies. I’m glad I live in a country where I’m allowed to express my opinions, as wrong-headed as they may be. And I’m thankful that you readers have the same rights.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Products and services, Microsoft (MSFT), Sony Corp ADR (SNE), Technology

This post is part of our Hottest Products of 2007 feature. Also check out our other Hottest Products of 2007 posts and let us know which product you think is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

For gamers, the experience is everything, and their heroes are not the wonks designing Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT)’s Xbox or Nintendo’s Wii, but the creators of the worlds that hold them in thrall. None has done it better than Bungie Studio’s Halo 3, the first-person shooter game that is one of our Hottest Products of 2007.

The numbers demonstrate just how this game annihilated its competitors. 4.2 million units were in stores on the day the third iteration of this game was unveiled September 25. In the U.S. alone, Halo 3 grossed $170 million its first day, and $300 million in the first week. More than a million players competed live in its first day of release, via Xbox Live.

Continue reading Hottest Products of 2007: ‘Halo 3′ comes out firing

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Whole Foods Market (WFMI), Bargain stocks, Stocks to Buy

Shares in high-end grocery retailer Whole Foods (NASDAQ: WFMI) have slid around 20% since early November. The most obvious explanation for the pullback — investors remain concerned that a weakening housing market and continued turmoil in the credit markets could result in a slowdown at Whole Foods.

However, the company is more resistant to these pressures than many investors realize. Americans have shown an increasing desire to eat healthier — a trend that has allowed sales of organic foods to grow at three times the rate as those at conventional groceries. As the largest retailer of organic products, Whole Foods is well-positioned to benefit from this trend.

Moreover, while the company is the clear leader in the organic grocery niche, it’s still a minnow compared to traditional grocery giants like Safeway and Kroger. With only around 200 stores spread across the U.S., the U.K. and Canada, Whole Foods still has plenty of untapped markets to expand into over the coming years.

Two additional factors are also weighing on the shares at the moment. The first is a general fear regarding the potential impact of increasing competition in the organic foods market. In recent years, traditional grocery chains have been adding to their selection of organic foods. At the same time, new entrants, such as Britain’s Tesco, are also targeting the space more seriously. However, Whole Foods remains the undisputed leader in this market and offers the widest product selection. Furthermore, there’s plenty of room for multiple competitors in this growing space.

Finally, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) continues to pursue an antitrust case against Whole Foods’ merger with rival Wild Oats Market. However, the FTC’s case is weak and was strongly rejected by a judge earlier this year. The courts also rejected the government’s attempts to block the merger pending an appeal — Whole Foods has now completed the deal. It’s highly unlikely that an appeals court will overturn the deal and break up the merger.

If you are interested in more analysis from Paul Tracy, you can find it at StreetAuthority.com

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Products and services, Consumer experience, Internet, Google (GOOG), Technology

This post is part of our Hottest Products of 2007 feature. Also check out our other Hottest Products of 2007 posts and let us know which product you think is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

2007 may go down as the year people’s perceptions of what a map is changed forever, and proved the value of user-generated content. Much of that sea change can be credited to Google Maps.

Maps — for centuries static, analog pieces of information — have gone digital, allowing us to add layer upon layer of additional information, in a variety that strains imagination. For example:

• Maps that contain links to photographs of the noted location. If you want to know what the intersection of the Dawson and Dempster highways in Alaska looks like, you might find it on a Google Map. (Hint: There’s a big sign warning hunters that it is illegal to leave gut piles within 1 km of the road).
• Fans of the writer Patrick O’Brian (such as myself), can refer to a user-generated Google Map tracing the travels of his heroes Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin.
• Followers of the television show The Amazing Race can track the participants’ progress on a Google Map.
• The Los Angeles Times created a Google map for readers to track the progress of the recent outburst of wildfires.

• A runner in the New York Marathon created a Google Map updated from the BlackBerry in his pocket that allowed his friends to track his progress along the route.
• American Airlines created a map that guided its customers to locations where they could make purchases that added points to their frequent flyer accounts.

The beauty of Google Maps is several fold: ease of use, ease of distribution, the ability to layer in information regardless of format (spreadsheets, databases, photos, video, music), at no cost. Google Maps is perhaps the best example of the incredible potential of user-generated content.

One more advantage — when you’re done, you don’t have to figure out how to refold the damn things.

If you’ve had some experience with this product, let us know about it. Or if you know of something else that you think is one of the Hottest Products of 2007, feel free to tell us about that as well.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Share This