Intellectual Property Law

Please Share This On Facebook

By Marty Schwimmer

I logged onto CNN.COM and immediately noticed my friend's name next to a CNN headline. What? After some confusion, I realized that CNN has installed Facebook's Open Graph Plug-in. This article will explain it better than I will, but I'll try any way. My friend must have indicated that she had 'liked' a particular article by 'sharing' it on FB. CNN must store that info. I logged onto FB and CNN was able to tell that she was my FB friend (by CNN looking at my list of FB friends. hmmm.) CNN then populated a 'popular on Facebook' box with her name and the fact that she had shared the article ((along with other information that was of no interest to me whatsoever, for example 11 thousand people on FB had shared this article).

Now, my friend had voluntarily decided to make this information about her reading habits public to her FB friends, and I would have seen this info anyway the next time I logged onto FB, but somehow I felt a little creeped out by this - as we hurtle ever closer to the scene in 'Minority Report' where Tom Cruise is being chased in the shopping mall, and the talking advertisements almost blow his cover.

Full post as published by Trademark Blog on April 23, 2010 (boomark / email).