NEW YORK — Facebook Social Advertising Event, Nov. 6, 2007 — Facebook announced today that 44 websites are using Facebook Beacon to allow users to share information from other websites for distribution to their friends on Facebook. These sites are participating in the launch of Beacon, a new way to socially distribute information on Facebook. Beacon is a core element of the Facebook Ads system for connecting businesses with users and targeting advertising to the audiences they want.
The websites participating in Beacon can determine the most relevant and appropriate set of actions from their sites that users can distribute on Facebook. These actions can include posting an item for sale, completing a purchase, scoring a high score in an online game or viewing of video. When users who are logged into Facebook visit a participating site, they receive a prompt asking whether to they want to share those activities with their friends on Facebook. If they do, those friends can now view those actions through News Feed or Mini-Feed stories.
eBay plans to use Beacon so eBay.com sellers will be able to choose to include their eBay listings in their Facebook News Feeds. This will allow them to share the items they are selling with their network of friends. In doing so, eBay.com sellers can leverage a new way to drive potential bidders and buyers to their listings. eBay expects to make this feature available to sellers on eBay.com in early 2008.
“Beacon offers an interesting new way for us to deliver on our goal of bringing more bidders and buyers to our sellers’ listings,” said Gary Briggs, senior vice president and chief marketing officer, eBay North America. “In a marketplace where trust and reputation are crucial to success, giving sellers the ability to easily alert their network of friends – the people who already know and trust them – to an item for sale has the potential to be a powerful tool.”
In keeping with Facebook’s philosophy of user control, Facebook Beacon provides advanced privacy controls so Facebook users can decide whether to distribute specific actions from participating sites with their friends.
Fandango, the nation’s leading moviegoer destination, is using Beacon so when Facebook users purchase a movie ticket on Fandango.com, they can share their movie plans with their friends on Facebook. Consumers gain a new way to tell their friends about their movie tastes, while Fandango is able to gain greater social distribution on Facebook.
“People love to share movies with their friends,” said Chuck Davis, CEO of Fandango. “When it comes to movies, everyone has an opinion. Fandango is excited to be selected as one of the first sites to implement Beacon, allowing Facebook users to share the excitement of moviegoing with their friends.”
A number of IAC brands, including CollegeHumor, Busted Tees, iWon, Citysearch, Pronto.com and echomusic will also be using Facebook Beacon to share actions taken on participating IAC sites from concert tickets to restaurant reviews with friends online. The sheer diversity and scale of IAC brands has the potential to enable Facebook friends to share the more interesting parts of their life online.
“IAC brands touch consumers in a multitude of different ways everyday. Bringing together great consumer services and products and the added ability to share individual actions with friends via Facebook can only add value to what we do and who we do it for,” said Doug Lebda, president and chief operating officer of IAC.
As a way to let travelers tell their Facebook friends about upcoming travel plans, Travelocity is implementing Facebook Beacon on its website. When Facebook users book travel on Travelocity, they can choose to share that information with their friends on Facebook.
“Travel is naturally a social activity that travelers enjoy discussing with the people they know,” said Jeff Glueck, chief marketing officer at Travelocity. “Using Beacon, Travelocity users can now easily choose to spread the news of their latest vacation plans on Facebook as a complement to their activities on the Travelocity website.”
Additional websites and companies participating in Beacon at launch include AllPosters.com, Blockbuster, Bluefly.com, CBS Interactive (CBSSports.com & Dotspotter), ExpoTV, Gamefly, Hotwire, Joost, Kiva, Kongregate, LiveJournal, Live Nation, Mercantila, National Basketball Association, NYTimes.com, Overstock.com, (RED), Redlight, SeamlessWeb, Sony Online Entertainment LLC, Sony Pictures, STA Travel, The Knot, TripAdvisor, Travel Ticker, TypePad, viagogo, Vox, Yelp, WeddingChannel.com and Zappos.com.