December 9th, 2007
Did I Invent Facebook Beacon?
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 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.





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??
> Did I Invent Facebook Beacon?
Apparently you did — isn’t that already quite obvious?
/ac.
it’s not a stretch at all
No matter what, from now on, I’m referring to you as Scott Karp, the guy who invented Facebook Beacon.
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.
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.