Oh, I guess I’m in the Facebook Instant Personalization Program. You Might Be, Too.
While I’m a huge fan of Facebook Connect and its platform technology, I don’t like signing up for things that, well, I didn’t sign up for. Inside Pandora Radio, I can now see what songs and artists my Facebook friends liked (and I assume they can see what I liked). This isn’t necessarily bad in principle, but I would have appreciated having some say in the matter.
On bottom left, you can see my friend Diana liked this Phoenix song.
I tweeted a few days ago that I’d never set this up, and a fellow Twitter citizen informed me that Facebook basically just opted me into it. I’m sure they put out news about this (maybe at F8, and is lumped in the “Like” button announcement?). I’ve been insanely busy with work stuff, but if I haven’t read about this program, I’m comfortable saying that means about 99 percent of Facebook’s user base hasn’t heard about it, either.
To see if you’re opted into this program, go to Account in the top right corner of your home page. Click on “Privacy Settings” and then “Applications and Websites.” Click on the Instant Personalization Pilot Program, and you’ll be taken to this page (where, in my case, the box was already checked).
You might want to check.
It hasn’t happened yet, but Facebook is going to burn me one of these days when a friend is listening to Pandora like you pointed out in the post, and it says “Doug likes this artist”, referring to Culture Club…
I was surprised to find a Facebook friend staring at me from the pages of CNN.com the other day. Just a touch creepy and defintely pushing me to reset my privacy settings.
Thanks for the insight – def. was opted ‘in’…not anymore though….
D
The opt-in box CAN’T be un-checked — you have to go separately to every site that it’s opted you into. And who knows what it will opt you into later?
Really outrageous.