Google Plans to Sell Users' Endorsements

Two powerful commercial forces are about to conflict and whichever wins may provide significant insights into the future direction of business and the individual.

Google has announced it is joining Facebook in selling its users' likes or friending of products and services. Not just those of celebrities, but of anyone whose network and name the companies perceive to be worth flogging for profit. This may seem intrusive but inocuous assuming, that is, if it is restricted to toothpaste, running shoes or fast food. Given what we already know about our society's penchant for violating the boundaries of personal space and good taste, those limits are likely to be breached quickly, if they have not been already.

One can imagine a friend's 'like' of another's social commentary then being featured in a political ad by a group trying to win some sort of referendum. The size or demographic characteristics of user's circle of friends will be a factor, but the notion that anything you do, say or indicate on line is suddenly for sale - without your permission or reimbursement - is now a reality.

The privacy implications are disturbing enough: one can imagine many people not really wanting to have to think about the socio-political implications of a casual thumbs up for a friend, especially if they are younger. But the notion that these companies now intend to reap monetary benefits without permission or payment seems destined to fail. The recent test cases regarding unauthorized usage of amateur college athletes' images is probably a strong indicator of where this is headed: to court and then to the users' advantage.

The conflict between personal rights and implied ownership of digital activity is just beginning to be understood and formally debated in the courts and the world's legislatures. That Google and Facebook see commercial appeal in these networks is perfectly understandable. That they believe they can reap those benefits without pushback and demand for recourse from the people affected seems less strategically sound. JL

Claire Miller and Vindu Goel report in the New York Times:

Those long-forgotten posts on social networks, from the pasta someone photographed to the rant about her dentist, are forgotten no more. Social networks want to make them easier to find, and in some cases, to show them in ads.

Google on Friday announced that it would soon be able to show users’ names, photos, ratings and comments in ads across the Web, endorsing marketers’ products. Facebook already runs similar endorsement ads. But on Thursday it, too, took a step to show personal information more broadly by changing its search settings to make it harder for users to hide from other people trying to find them on the social network.

Both companies characterized these changes as minor updates. They are, though, the latest example of the continual push by Web companies to collate the reams of personal information shared online in the chase for profits. As Twitter prepares to go public and faces pressures to become profitable, it too will increasingly need to figure out how to make money from the information it collects.

Google and Facebook say that with the most recent changes, they are trying to offer users more comprehensive and personalized services. The problem, privacy advocates say, is when Web companies use or display the personal information of users in ways the authors did not expect when they originally posted it.

“People expect when they give information, it’s for a single use, the obvious one,” said Dr. Deborah C. Peel, a psychoanalyst and founder of Patient Privacy Rights, an advocacy group. “That’s why the widening of something you place online makes people unhappy. It feels to them like a breach, a boundary violation.”

“We set our own boundaries,” she added. “We don’t want them set by the government or Google or Facebook."

Dr. Peel said the rise of new services like Snapchat, which features person-to-person messages that disappear after they are opened, showed how much people wanted more control over how their information was shared.

Still, the biggest Internet companies are pushing in the other direction, toward an expectation that more information is shown publicly. Google’s announcement came in an update to its terms of service that allows the company to include in ads adult users’ profile information and preferences, ratings and posts they have made on Google Plus and other Google services like search and YouTube.

When the new ad policy goes live on Nov. 11, Google will be able to show what the company calls shared endorsements on Google sites and across the Web, on the more than two million sites in Google’s display advertising network, which are viewed by an estimated one billion people. If a user follows a bakery on Google Plus or gives an album four stars on the Google Play music service, for instance, that person’s name, photo and endorsement could show up in ads for that bakery or album.

Such product endorsements, especially from friends and acquaintances, are a powerful lure to brands, replicating word-of-mouth marketing on a broad scale. Social advertising — which includes a wide range of ads, including endorsements — is a $9.5 billion business, according to eMarketer, accounting for 8 percent of digital ad spending.

Many users, though, have strong and skeptical feelings about their endorsements being used in ads without their explicit permission. Facebook learned this the hard way when it was sued in a class action by users who claimed the company had not adequately notified them about how it was using endorsements.

Google may find, too, that by simply following a company or commenting on a post, users might not have meant their actions as endorsements.

“The trick to any advertising like this is to avoid coming across as creepy to your user base and have them say, ‘I didn’t want anyone else to know that,’ ” said Zachary Reiss-Davis, an analyst at Forrester Research.

Google said it would give users the chance to opt out of being included in the new endorsements, and people under the age of 18 will automatically be excluded. If a Google Plus user has shared comments with a limited set of people, only people in that circle will see the personalized ads. Ratings and reviews on services like Google Plus Local are automatically public and can be used in ads, unless a user opts out of shared endorsements.

Google declined to specify exactly how it planned to use endorsements in ads. Currently, Google does not have an ad option incorporating more social data ready to be used by advertisers. Instead, the company said it wanted the ability to offer such ads in the future and was notifying users in advance.

Addressing potential privacy concerns in a notice to users posted on its site on Friday, Google said, “When it comes to shared endorsements in ads, you can control the use of your Profile name and photo.”

Though Google Plus has significantly fewer users than Facebook — 190 million users post on Google Plus and 390 million use it indirectly by sharing on other Google sites, compared with 1.2 billion users on Facebook — Google’s variety of services and broad ad network gives it a potentially wider reach.

Facebook has been aggressively marketing social endorsements, which it calls sponsored stories. For example, if you post that you love McDonald’s new Mighty Wings on the chain’s Facebook page, McDonald’s could pay Facebook to broadcast your kind words to all your friends.

Facebook does not allow its users to opt out of such ads, although users can limit how their actions on the social network are used in some other types of ads.

Twitter also enables advertisers to show public tweets in their ads, but requires advertisers to get the permission of the original author of a message before using it in an ad.

Although advertising irks some users — even while it helps support free services — social ads have proved particularly contentious.

Facebook recently settled the class-action lawsuit on its sponsored ads. In late August, it tried to impose a new privacy policy that would have given the company clearer rights to run social ads without a user’s explicit permission. After privacy groups complained, the Federal Trade Commission began an inquiry into the changes, prompting Facebook to suspend the process.

The change Facebook made Thursday was the equivalent of forbidding users from having an unlisted number in the phone book. But the company said that since Facebook users could be found in other ways, for example through posts by other members, it was discontinuing the option to be hidden. Facebook said the best way for users to protect their privacy was to adjust the settings for their profile and each individual post they make.

Google, which is under the supervision of the F.T.C. for a previous social networking privacy violation and faces privacy audits and fines for privacy misrepresentations, is taking pains to show that it has considered the privacy implications of the new ads. For instance, it will notify users of the change with banners on Google’s home page, in search results, in Google Plus notifications and elsewhere.

In Europe, where privacy is considered a personal right and lawmakers have been debating what data people can reasonably expect companies to use, early reaction was skeptical. Jan Philipp Albrecht, a German member of the European Parliament who is the main sponsor of legislation overhauling the bloc’s privacy standards, said lawmakers would consider Google’s change in the legislation.

“We need to go back to the basic rules for fair dealing and transparent decision making, rather than tricking the citizen,” he said.