CES 2008

Little over a month since Facebook's Beacon advertising service came under fire over privacy concerns, the company's chief revenue officer has said that the "social ad" will remain a key focus for the social-networking site.

Owen Van Natta, chief revenue officer at Facebook, told an audience at the Consumer Electronics Show that most Facebook users are comfortable with sharing information about the products and services they consume.

Facebook's Beacon is an advertising service which posts messages on users' Facebook profiles about any purchases they make on Facebook-affiliated e-commerce sites. These social ads expose to other users such information as what movies their friend has watched, what music they have consumed, or what brand of clothes they prefer.

The premise of Beacon is that friends and other people who are intimately connected to a user are more likely to influence a purchasing decision than any other form of advertising.

The service came under fire late last year when it was discovered that users had little control over the release of information pertaining to their purchasing decisions. After a period of intense media scrutiny, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg responded with an apology and offered an option which allows Facebook users to opt out of the Beacon service altogether.

But Van Natta says it was the press and other privacy advocates, and not users, which forced the apology upon the company.

"One of the reasons it took us so long (for us) to respond was because it wasn't really a user thing as much as it was the press and the folks who are trying to highlight it and make it important to people," he said.

Van Natta said that only a "small single digit percentage" of Facebook users have since taken the remedial step of a total opt-out from Beacon. And not a single advertiser pulled out of the project when the privacy concerns were exposed.

In fact, the company plans to "open up" the Beacon service beyond the first 60 companies it began with, and will eventually make it "self-service."

Facebook users, he said, are predominantly young people who have grown up in an age where they are used to their information being shared on the Internet.

"We built Beacon because when you look at people's profiles, they are already doing things to share this kind of information; there is just the friction of having to enter it all in manually," he said.

As more and more content floods the Web, Van Natta believes that a greater emphasis will be placed on the "credibility of identity and content."

"Amazon.com reviews have become far more useful since posters have had to provide their name and since users have been able to vote on whether the review is useful," he said.

"Every day I hear radio ads for restaurants, but they rarely convince me to go eat at that restaurant. A friend, on the other hand, a person who actually knows me and knows my taste, can cause me to take action. The lens through which (the recommendation) is provided is the big difference," he said.

"We think people will want to expand what they are doing with Facebook," he said. "We just have to get the product right so that there's a comfort level and people don't think their privacy is being invaded. If you don't give people that comfort they won't share that information and usage won't happen."

At a pre-CES event last night, I looked at two little GPS gizmos that are designed to attach to your dog's collar, so if Spot goes running off you can find him again. Both devices use GPS to locate themselves and cellular networks to transmit their location to a central service, allowing subscribers to view the locations on Web maps.

The Zoombak GPS unit is not quite as tiny as it appears here, since the guy who was holding this device has monster hands.

(Credit: Rafe Needleman / CNET)

First up: the Zoombak Advanced GPS Dog Locator costs $199 plus $15 a month for service. It's got a five-day battery and lets you spot Spot on a full-sized Web map, should you need to find him. Of course, if your dog is missing and you locate him on the Web from your PC at home, he's not likely to still be where the Web said he was when you get there. So Zoombak also has a voice-based service that will direct you to the GPS receiver's location when you need it.

I posited that you could use Zoombak with people, too, but the exec I was talking to looked at me in horror, imagining, I think, me locking a location collar around my wife or child. Silly man. I was just thinking about putting the device in a kid's backpack or something.

Zoombak also makes a car version that taps into the car's power and can be hidden somewhere. You can use the Zoombak site to see where the car is at any time, or you can "geofence" the car, alerting you if it leaves town, for example. Or telling you when the child you've lent it to finally gets home. Or doesn't.

The sealed Pocketfinder unit, resting on its inductive charging cradle.

(Credit: Rafe Needleman / CNET)

The Zoombak's big advantage is that it's shipping now, but an upcoming competitor looks like a better deal. The Pocketfinder is a touch smaller, charges by induction (is sealed and waterproof), and will cost less: $129 and "less than" $15 a month when it ships in March. The company claims a seven-day battery life.

The Pocketfinder spokespeople imagine the device being put on the keychains of kids and senior citizens, and maybe even in luggage. I love that last idea. There is no car version yet.

Pocketfinder will have a mobile Web site instead of a voice service for geolocating registered devices when you're on the run.

The monthly fees on these products need to come down, but the concept of a location tag that you can attach to your most precious assets is pretty cool. It's also terrifying from a privacy perspective. I don't need to spell out why.