Facebook Adds Ads To News Feed

An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from an article at ZDNet: "As expected, Facebook has started displaying ads in users' News Feeds. You may not be seeing them yet as the company is rolling them out gradually, like it does for all its changes. ... Last month, a Facebook spokesperson said the company hoped to 'show people no more than one Sponsored Story in their News Feeds per day.' This is no longer the case, as Facebook now says you may see more Featured stories 'if you visit your News Feed a lot.'"

Comments

Re:No real opt-out

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA implies that there isn't any opt-out, other than unliking pages or nuking individual ads:

Since these ads are just stories, they cannot be stopped completely (although ad blockers may find a way around this). Users do, however, have three options provided by Facebook to limit the ads: click hide to remove individual stories, limit the volume of stories you see from a specific friend to only important posts, or unfriend the person and/or unlike the Page to stop seeing certain kinds of stories altogether.

This is going to piss off more than a few people...

I'm with DCTech I only like stuff I actually like and want updates from, if you're one of those idiots who just "like's" everything then I feel no pity for you. I think the system they have set makes sense and people shouldn't complain about ads when it is free platform they are providing us, they need some way to monetize and stay operational.

Slashdot loves facebook

[ieatcookies]

Free service puts some ads up, next story at 11. I predict yhis submission still gets 5000 comments with the obligatory "that's why I have never had a Facebook account" and "Facebook is selling your info to nazis". Slashdot loves to hate.

Re:Slashdot loves facebook

[Scutter]

Free service puts some ads up, next story at 11. I predict yhis submission still gets 5000 comments with the obligatory "that's why I have never had a Facebook account" and "Facebook is selling your info to nazis". Slashdot loves to hate.

It's not even slightly free. You're paying by giving them a huge amount of marketable data about yourself. Just because it doesn't cost you actual dollars doesn't mean you aren't paying.

Re:Slashdot loves facebook

[Scutter]

Yup. Huge amounts of data. My name and birthdate. Have fun with that.

Most people who use Facebook willingly supply them with much more info than that. The names and relationships of all of their friends and family, what they like, e-mail addresses, what web sites they browse (if they don't clear FB cookies), etc. Obviously, you're not a typical FB user, but I would be surprised if they didn't know a lot more about you than you think.

I have no problem with this in and of itself. If people want to play Farmville and are happy with Zynga having all of their personal information, that's between them and Zynga. My only point is that one shouldn't mistake Facebook for a free website.

Re:No real opt-out

[Ron2K]

I'm with DCTech I only like stuff I actually like and want updates from, if you're one of those idiots who just "like's" everything then I feel no pity for you.

"One of those idiots" probably isn't applicable to most of the /. populace... but would apply to the overwhelming majority of Facebook users. ;)

Make no sense

[Rik Sweeney]

What's the point of running an advert in your News Feed for, say, Ben and Jerry's if you already Like it? You're the only one who'll see it and since you already like it, they're not encouraging anyone else to try their product.

What FB wants to do is show adverts for things you like in your friends News Feeds.

Shit :(