All our whining, for once, accomplished something. Facebook’s controversial Beacon feature can now be completely turned off by going into your privacy settings. (Beacon would announce on your news feed if you bought something from a partner site with minimal chance for you to opt out.) Someone can tell MoveOn.org to call off its attack dogs now.
Mark Zuckerberg, the site’s founder—don’t tell that to the Connect U guys, though—apologized yesterday for the way Facebook handled the whole Beacon Affair. He said the whole purpose of the feature was to “to try to help people share information with their friends about things they do on the web.” (Really, though, how much of what you do on the Web is gossip-worthy? “Oh my goodness, Deleon is reading Marca again, let’s post on his wall about it.”)
So that’s it. The Crisis is over and we can all go back to worshiping Facebook and the ground that Zuckerberg walks on.
Thoughts on Beacon [Facebook via New York Times]