Facebook Lets Publishers Contact “Likers” | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Lets Publishers Contact “Likers”

allfacebook.com

14 pointsTichy7 comments

Anyone else think this is going to become a new spam channel? It's like having 100% guaranteed email delivery into an inbox, with a very high percentage of recepients actually reading what you sent.

Contact by publishing things to the feeds of those who Liked something.

Still. I knew they'd continue down this route, and I completely expect them to make things ever more advertiser-friendly and user-hostile. Makes me glad I jumped ship a while ago.

What are "the feeds of those who Liked something" - mixed in with the Status updates of my friends? I think that could be a big deal, and also make people think twice about liking stuff. Or rather, they'll probably not make a connection and just get annoyed at FB.

That's pretty much exactly what it sounds like, yes. The documentation calls them "stream updates", in the same way as you can with Pages. I'm not on FB, so I'm not sure if Pages allow you to do more than that; if so, I'd assume Liked-updates can do the same things.

http://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph#publishing

So when they post something to my stream, does it also show up in my friends news feed?

It's bad enough that "liking" something means I opt in to potential spam. But it would be even worse if it opted in my friends too.

Not certain in the least, but I do doubt it. Unless someone can verify one way or the other? Do your (subscribed-to) Page's updates appear to your friends who are not also subscribed to that Page?

The useful information is not only that you like an object, but if you want to receive ads for objects "similar" to that one, so they need a way to know how specific are you about your object. If you want a generic object give 0 as specificity level, if you are very selective put 90. If you are only interested in this particular object and not in any other put 100. Just an idea.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com