Ever since Facebook introduced the “like” button for comments, photos, status updates, etc., many users have expressed the need for a “dislike” button to level things out. Now unscrupulous marketers are using peoples’ desire for a dislike button to their own advantage. [More]
Data & Privacy
Amazon Offers To Connect With Your Facebook Account
By 8.2.10
Remember Beacon? This is not Beacon, Amazon wants you to know. The retailer has launched a new program where you can connect your Amazon account to your Facebook account, but it promises it won’t broadcast your purchases or bug your friends. Instead, the connection seems designed to funnel all the likes and favorites on your Facebook account (and those of your friends as well) into Amazon’s giant brain, so it can refine its shopping recommendations. Oh, and it will remind you of upcoming birthdays. [More]
Personal Info For 100 Million Facebook Users Harvested Into One File
By 7.28.10
Do you share your personal info with everyone on Facebook? If so, there’s a decent chance that data is now part of a file — containing information for around 100 million users of the social networking site — that’s now making its way around the Web. [More]
College Student Goes To Cancun For A Week, Comes Back To $11,667 Sprint Bill
By 7.26.10
Stacey says while she was on vacation with her family in Cancun for a week recently, she checked her Facebook page from her Evo phone “maybe 5 minutes a day,” but never uploaded or sent any photos, “only a handful of texts.” Sprint says she managed to burn through either 600 MB or 4.7 GB of data during that period, and now owes them $11,667.73. (Note: Stacey doesn’ t specify whether the 4,918,228 kb of data is in kilobits or kilobytes, so I don’t know which number is accurate.) [More]
Social Media Bigwigs Reveal Advertising Tactics
By 7.25.10
Back in the day, advertising was supposed to be kinda sneaky — yeah, we knew companies were directing ads at us consumers in an effort to get us to buy stuff, but no one talked about it. Now, social media heavies like Twitter, Zynga (makers of Farmville, Mafia Wars and other time leechers) and LinkedIn are being totally open about their efforts. [More]
Consumers Hate Facebook As Much As Airlines, Cable Companies
By 7.22.10
Has Facebook’s ongoing foolishness with privacy settings, fine print, and advertising taken its toll on the brand? According to The American Customer Satisfaction Index’s E-Business Report, Facebook scored 64 points out of 100, which puts it in the bottom 5% of private companies, “in the same range as airlines and cable companies.” The one bit of good news for Facebook is that MySpace scored 63 points. [More]
Burger King And Coca Cola Both Caught Badvertising In The UK
By 7.21.10
It hasn’t been a good week on the other side of the pond for Burger King or Coca Cola. The fast food company got a kick in the rear for misleading customers about the size of its chicken sandwich, while the cola giant is left having to tell little kids not to Google “2 girls 1 cup” after a failed Facebook campaign. [More]
Court Lifts Restraining Order On Facebook's Assets
By 7.21.10
Recently, a judge in New York slapped a restraining order on Facebook’s ability to transfer company assets after a web designer sued the site, claiming he is entitled to an 84% share of the company. But yesterday, the social networking giant got a bit of relief when a different judge reversed the earlier order. [More]
Netflix: We Can Murder Your Account With No Notice At Our Whim
By 7.20.10
It’s amazing what we agree to every day when we scroll through infinite screens of dense legalese to click the box that said we’ve read and agree to abide by the terms of service on various sites. Brandon discovered that Neftlix users have all consented for the company to stop its endless supply of movie and TV shows for any reason whatsoever. [More]
New Company Aims To Reward Consumers For Their Personal Info
By 7.18.10
Truth is, there are advertisers and marketers out there just slavering over our personal information on the Internet, trying to get their hands on as much as they can so they can better pitch their products to us. From our Facebook profiles to our Internet searches, that info is like gold. And now there’s a company attempting to give consumers some reward, instead of just advertisers. [More]
Beware Of Coca Cola Facebook Scam
By 7.15.10
Are any of your Facebook friends posting status updates about how they’ve been turned off from drinking Coca Cola after watching some video? Yes, there’s the rare chance your friend has gotten sick of the “Buy the World a Coke” jingle, but it’s more likely that their account has been hijacked (or rather, “clickjacked”) by nefarious, nerdy forces. [More]
Old Spice's Brilliant Marketing Your Product Could Market Like
By 7.14.10
We at Consumerist mostly focus on when companies screw up, with some exceptions. We must give credit for brilliant marketing strategies when it is due, though, and yesterday’s personalized YouTube video blitz by Old Spice’s towel-wrapped spokesman, Isaiah “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” Mustafa, qualifies as brilliant. [More]
Yet Another Person Says He Owns Facebook
By 7.12.10
The WSJ says they have seen a copy of a contract (signed in 2003) giving an investor an 84% stake in the website that was to eventually become Facebook. This contract is now the subject of a new lawsuit against the privately held company. [More]
What Would You Do With A Forklift Full Of Wheat Thins?
By 7.1.10
Have you seen Nabisco’s new attempt to engage with customers through those social networking thingies that all the kids are into? They’re the latest brand to reach out through social media and find customers who are already talking about their brand, then engage with them. In completely ridiculous ways. Take, for example, the woman whose mournful Facebook post about running out of Wheat Thins led to the delivery of more Wheat Thins than one person could ever eat. [More]
Consumers Have More Trust In Companies That Tweet
By 6.23.10
A new survey shows that 75% of consumers think companies that tweet or post Facebook updates are more deserving of their trust than companies that don’t. The CEO of Fleishman-Hillard, which conducted the survey with Harris Interactive, says he thinks it shows that companies need to respond to crises much more openly and quickly than in years past: “Not in a 24-hours news cycle, but in minute-to-minute monitoring.” [More]
Mother Tracks Down Kidnapped Kids Using Facebook
By 6.6.10
While the rest of you were busy asking friends to join your gang in MafiaWars or doing whatever it is you’re supposed to do in Farmville, a mother in California was busy using Facebook for a good reason — to track down her two children who had been kidnapped 15 years earlier. [More]
Nervous Facebook CEO Claims People Are Overreacting To Privacy Changes
By 6.3.10
Business Insider says that the usually calm and collected Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg “seemed to melt on stage,” while answering questions from industry insiders at the All Things D Conference. They also report that Mr. Zuckerberg told the crowd that he doesn’t believe in giving users the choice to “opt-in” to privacy changes because back when Facebook introduced the “news feed” everyone freaked out — but it turned out OK in the end. [More]
