December 9th, 2007

Did I Invent Facebook Beacon?

by Scott Karp

I came across a post I wrote last summer about Facebook monetization and was horrified to read the following:

What if there were a way for companies to identify which Facebook users were actually using their products, and then create a mechanism for the users to highlight their use of the product to their friends — and then put those users into the economic value chain.

I checked Google Analytics, and sure enough, this post received 3 visits from the thefacebook.com domain on July 12 when it was published, and again on July 24.

facebook-ga.jpg

Facebook Beacon was announced on November 6 — that would be nearly four months of development time, and considering what a mess they made of it…

You don’t think…

This is absurd, of course, but on the 0.000001% chance it’s not — I’M SO SORRY.

(The horror, the horror)

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Comments (6 Responses so far)

  1. Now that’s funny Scott. The funniest thing I’ve ever read by you. In fact, who knows…stranger things have happened. Guess we’ll have to name you in teh class action suit?? :D

  2. > Did I Invent Facebook Beacon?

    Apparently you did — isn’t that already quite obvious?

    :-)
    /ac.

  3. it’s not a stretch at all

  4. No matter what, from now on, I’m referring to you as Scott Karp, the guy who invented Facebook Beacon.

  5. I have been saying for some time that Facebook seem to get their product strategies from blogs like publishing 2.0, techcrunch, read/write web, mashable etc

    I guess now it’s proven.

    Why dont you invent another product strategy for them and see if they pick it up.

  6. That must be worth about, oh I dunno, $250m? You should expect a bottle of whisky in the post from fb. And a number of bricks through windows from everyone else.

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