Facebook sells users to corporates

WILDLY popular social network Facebook is to test the loyalty of its 50-million-strong user base, unveiling a new advertising system that targets its users based on their personal preferences.

The company is also announced plans to allow corporations to launch dedicated brand pages on the service, saying it had already signed deals with dozens of companies, including Coca-Cola, Blockbuster and eBay.

Facebook Ads would allow marketers to become “part of the conversation,” Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg told a conference in New York.

The highlight of the system is that “users can now learn about new businesses, brands and products through the trusted referrals of their friends,” the company said.

The Facebook ad system was expected, but its invasiveness has surprised some users. Groups have already appeared on the service protesting the use of personal information by the system.

Facebook’s corporate blog said the Facebook Ads system improved the service for its users. It promised its pages would remain clean-looking, and that users would not see any more advertisments than they see now.

The company also said the service would allow its users to keep in closer contact with the brands they feel “passionate” about.

Mr Zuckerberg said the social network’s role in advertising was becoming increasingly powerful.

“Social actions are powerful because they act as trusted referrals and reinforce the fact that people influence people,” said Mr Zuckerberg said.

“It’s no longer just about messages that are broadcasted out by companies, but increasingly about information that is shared between friends. So we set out to use these social actions to build a new kind of ad system,” he said.

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Users take Facebook addiction to work

IT security and control firm Sophos has revealed the results of a new survey examining the potential productivity implications for businesses that allow their employees to access Facebook during office hours.

Sophos polled 500 Facebook users to find out how often they accessed or checked the popular social networking site from work and found that while 37.2 per cent only visited the site once or twice a day, eight per cent admitted using it up to ten times a day, and an astonishing 14.8 per cent, about one in seven, confessed to being logged onto Facebook almost permanently during their working day.

About 40 per cent of respondents said they never accessed Facebook from work, only using the social networking phenomena from home.

“The results show that more than one fifth of these Facebook users are actually Facebook abusers,” said Sophos senior technology consultant Graham Cluley.

“They're seriously struggling to tear themselves away from the website when they should be concentrating on their job,” he said.

"Several trade unions have spoken out in the site's defence, suggesting that employers should put more trust in their workforce, and clearly the majority of people are using the site in moderation. The problem is that a 20 percent addiction rate equates to an awful lot of loafing, while there's also the likelihood that the abusers could ruin it for the other rule-abiding users.”

According to Sophos, the survey results add weight to growing fears that sites such as Facebook are having a hugely detrimental impact on business productivity. Employment law firm Peninsula recently estimated that 233 million hours are lost every month in the UK alone as a result of employees using social networking sites.

"Many companies are now aware that Facebook brings with it a series of security concerns, particularly the risk of employees inadvertently revealing sensitive or confidential information to the wider world,” Mr Cluley said.

“When combined with the threat of an accompanying productivity slump, they may well decide that social-networking at work is simply more trouble than it's worth.”

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