Today Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, apologised for the mistakes the company had made during the build and implementation of its social advertising system called Beacon.
He explained that the company had set out to build something that was easy to use : "our goal was to build a simple product to let people share information across sites with their friends."
In his blog, Zuckerman stressed that Beacon is a product which helps Facebook users to share additional information with others. It is interesting that he omits to mention its intended use for raising adverting revenue!
How does Beacon work? It tracks Facebook users' purchases online at sites registered with the system and then advertises these purchases to members of their social network. Follow this link to read how one Facebook user found out about purchases made by her husband from her PC.
Most commentators have picked up on the privacy issue related to this story. Our interest, in this blog, is to note its lessons for students of innovation.
These include:
1. Organisations should make sure that their investment appraisal evalaution techniques extend beyond a consideration of technical issues and a cost benefit analysis. This company might have incuded some appraisal of the likely impact on its users and the consequent reputational damage it might suffer.
2. Innovation does not always benefit all stakeholders or wider society. It might affect people in society who are not even directly users of the innovative product or service.
This leaves us considering the question: "At what point does an innovation, that turns into a disaster from the shareholder perspective, become known as a bad idea rather than an innovation at all?
He explained that the company had set out to build something that was easy to use : "our goal was to build a simple product to let people share information across sites with their friends."
In his blog, Zuckerman stressed that Beacon is a product which helps Facebook users to share additional information with others. It is interesting that he omits to mention its intended use for raising adverting revenue!
How does Beacon work? It tracks Facebook users' purchases online at sites registered with the system and then advertises these purchases to members of their social network. Follow this link to read how one Facebook user found out about purchases made by her husband from her PC.
Most commentators have picked up on the privacy issue related to this story. Our interest, in this blog, is to note its lessons for students of innovation.
These include:
1. Organisations should make sure that their investment appraisal evalaution techniques extend beyond a consideration of technical issues and a cost benefit analysis. This company might have incuded some appraisal of the likely impact on its users and the consequent reputational damage it might suffer.
2. Innovation does not always benefit all stakeholders or wider society. It might affect people in society who are not even directly users of the innovative product or service.
This leaves us considering the question: "At what point does an innovation, that turns into a disaster from the shareholder perspective, become known as a bad idea rather than an innovation at all?
photo: courtesey of Scott Beale / Laughing Squid
