Globalizer

   last night I had a dinner with an old friend. we have not met each other for a long time even we lives in the same city. later his girl friend joined in as well. she is a marketer in cosmetics industry. then we talked about the marketing difference between luxury products and ordinary cosmetics. very relaxing!

   she also thinks it's still a problem to precisely target users during marketing. marketers always evaluate all kinds of media for different products. then I introduced Facebook Beacon to them. interesting thing happened. they shew totally different reaction on this. 

   This girl's opinion: Facebook Beacon is very useful for her. she said girls like to collect friends even strangers' product review/buy behavior before they want to buy something. girls like to buy good things but relatively low price. of course, she thinks facebook should give her a choice to turn Beacon on or off depending on the products. 

   my male friend's opinion: perhaps this will cause credit crisis. he took an example. he bought 2 moisturizers. one is high-end product, and the other is low-end product. for himself, he likes the low-end product. however, he thinks it's a shame if he shows he bought a low-end product via Facebook Beacon. so he chooses to show the high-end product only. later, his friend see his shopping story on facebook and is influenced as well to buy this high-end product. but, his friend doesn't like this product. his friend probably complains his misleading story. one time is ok, but if every story from him is misleading, his friend will leave question marks on their relationship. finally, a credit crisis will happen.

   of course, my friend's worry is too extreme. but it's possible. someone has said that most people on social networking websites like showoff. so it's very possible for people to only show their famous brands or luxury products shopping stories to their friends or networks.

   as for facebook, I think this kind of possibility is very low. firstly, most of your friends on facebook are those friends you have known in real life. your friend has certain understanding on each other's character, hobby and taste. secondly, if facebook add friend grouping function later, people can show different shopping stories to different friend group. then you can decide whether show your most real shopping behavior depending on how close your friend is to you. I am looking forward to facebook's action on this function.