I read yesterday’s MediaPost article about Facebook and MySpace’s new ad platforms. A couple of advocacy groups (Center for Digital Democracy and the U.S. Public Interest Research Groups) protested these marketing plans to the FTC yesterday. These groups are actually quite large and influential; the U.S. PIRG has a number of interests, including the environment, transportation and health care, in addition to media and internet reform.

So, for those of you who haven’t heard about Facebook’s new ad plaform, it’s really simple - advertisers will be able to deliver their marketing messages to users based on their activity, and the information that they share with friends.

And, a Business Week article on this topic said “Under the new system, marketers also will be able to create brand pages where users can view related media, review products or services, add items they like to their personal pages, and become friends, or “fans,” of the brand—and even make purchases.” Of course, these activities would show up in the users regular feeds to their friends - which many feel violates privacy.

I think the real controversy in this case is how much personal information marketers are given. The Business Week article suggests that the most vulnerable group are those young members who might not realize how much personal information they’re sharing, or where it will end up.

Personally, I’m torn. At first I thought ”I’ve already learned to cope with the ads in Gmail”, which use my personal conversations to fuel ad selections. How different is this? I suppose I also think that if I use this product for free, I shouldn’t mind being advertised to (as with Gmail). Futhermore, if I’m going to be advertised to, at least this new ad platform has the potential to make those ads relevant to my interests.

To gain some perspective, I asked Dan Dooley what he thought. His impression (in part) was that Facebook might have been wise to put more controls around the free distribution of user behaviors for the profit of advertisers.  I do get what he’s saying. With no restraints it’s easy to see how, for example, men who meet certain criteria could start seeing Viagra ads in their ad feeds, even though they never suggested an interest.

I’d love to hear everyone’s thoughts on this.