There's a new feature in Facebook that came out about 6 months ago called 'Instant Personalization' that many people have posted WARNINGS against on their Facebook walls, saying that it is violating people's privacy, etc.
etc.
And how dare they have it automatically enabled, etc.
etc.
I thought I should write an article to talk about what Instant Personalization is, and why it isn't something that should cause alarm.
It's actually a pretty nifty feature.
It's a feature that you'll probably want to keep on anyways.
What Instant Personalization is supposed to do is when you go to other partner websites of Facebook (like Pandora, Yelp, Docs, Bing...
), this feature let's those sites recognize you based on the information you have on your Facebook profile.
If you go to Pandora, for example, and you have allowed Pandora to use your Facebook info, it will then greet you with your name, and know your preferences by pulling the info from Facebook.
Now, the info they are pulling is the PUBLIC info that you are allowing to share with the public.
It does not pull in the information that you have set as PRIVATE through your Privacy Settings, which you can find under 'Account'.
So, as long as you have secured your information through these privacy settings, nothing personal will be shared.
This is the beauty...
and the safety of it.
The reason why Instant Personalization is really cool, is that when you go to a site and you see a Facebook "like" or "share" button, you can press it and "like/share" it to your Facebook Wall.
This is how, then, these partner sites can gather info about you and customize ( or personalize) your user experience so it is more tailored to your "likes".
For example, if you "like" a certain album...
or a certain song, Pandora will get a clue and then be able to show you and recommend for you other music groups that are similar to your "like".
That way, if you hate rap music, you'll never be presented with anything dealing in that genre.
Cool, no? So, if you see one of those WARNINGS posted by your friends on Facebook and you want to share it, please take off the part of the invasion of your privacy part, because it's not really the case.
If there's something you don't want shared, set it to private.
It's too cool of a feature to turn off.
As time goes on, you will see more and more websites becoming partners with Facebook.
It's the trend the web is heading into.
So once you realize that it's okay, you'll definitely want to come out and play!Take my advice, as your Maui web designer!