After I wrote my first post on the topic, a Zappos customer service rep contacted me with the email below: 

Hi Sandi,

I read your blog that was posted on Tuesday about your Zappos purchase and the data link to facebook.  I am so sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

This feature with Facebook is brand new and only works when you are logged into Facebook at the same time that you are placing an order on Zappos.com.  We are collecting feedback from customers and may or may not continue with this feature.

There is an opt out feature to disable the data feed from Zappos.com to Facebook.  All you would have to do is login into your Facebook account, click on the privacy link, click the “external websites” link, and then check the “never” radio button for Zappos.com.

Again, I apologize for any inconvenience.  As a token of goodwill, Zappos is issuing a $25.00 off coupon that you may use towards your next purchase at Zappos. Below is your coupon code.

And then the email went on to explain how to use the coupon and ended with their boilerplate, which includes their mantra: “We like to think of ourselves as a service company that happens to sell shoes.”

I wonder how many of these coupons Zappos has issued lately as a result of the Beacon feature.  So far, coupon aside, my experience with Zappos has been great.  The shoes came the next day, they’re exactly what I ordered and look just like they did on the site.  I was already contemplating my next purchase from them before their email arrived, and the discount coupon is a bonus. 

As with other Facebook applications, Beacon should be opt-in, rather than its current opt-out format.  On Cyber Monday, I hope my fellow online shoppers will log out of Facebook before making their next purchase.  

Instead of adding to my earlier post, I decided this whole Zappos-Facebook word of mouth marketing technique warranted its own post.

I added the link to my blog post as a posted item within my Facebook profile, and a few hours later it appeared as a News Feed item, pushing the information into each of my friends’ personal viewing space. That prompted an old camp friend to send me a blog posting by David Berkowitz about Beacon, Facebook’s new application that allows “users to share information from other websites for distribution to their friends on Facebook.” I got that from the press release, which lists Zappos.com as one of 44 participating in the Beacon launch.

Now I have the answers to all three questions I posed yesterday.

1. What does Zappos or Facebook think there is to gain by sharing my purchase with the masses?
2. What does that icon to the left of my name mean?
3. How the heck did it get there?

A peek at the Beacon application page answers question #2. Here’s an explanation for the application, which is written with marketers in mind:

Stories of a user’s engagement with your site may be displayed in his or her profile and in News Feed. These stories will act as a word-of-mouth promotion for your business and may be seen by friends who are also likely to be interested in your product.

And that answers question #1. Word of mouth marketing is their primary goal. But were my friends really influenced by my purchase decision? Some may have learned of Zappos.com, but I think the benefit to the advertiser was minimal.

Question 3 touches on user privacy issues, which the Beacon page also addresses. The application page mentions the importance of user privacy, but from my experience I think they need to walk the talk. Here’s what the page says (emphasis added by me):

When you send an action to Facebook, the user is immediately alerted of the story you wish to publish and will be alerted again when they sign into Facebook. The user can choose to opt out of the story in either instance, but the user doesn’t need to take any action for the story to be published on Facebook.

Really? Can I? I didn’t find that to be the case.

I find this interesting from a marketer’s perspective, but as a consumer I am troubled.

I discovered this by looking at my profile and my first thought was, “Holy shiitake! How did that get there?” I was horrified and my knee-jerk reaction was to delete it from my mini-feed so that no one could see it when they viewed my profile. But it was too late for that secret. I IM’d with my friend Lauren about my discovery and she said something like, “Oh yeah. I saw that. They’re cute.” So you mean everyone of my friends knows about my shoe purchase?! Sure enough, this was in every friend’s feed:

Anybody who can view my profile (which only people I’ve granted access to can do) could click on through to look at a picture of the shoes I bought. Thankfully my shoe size wasn’t a part of the feed. At least something was considered sacred.

I can’t figure out how my shoe purchase found its way into Facebook. I may have had Facebook open in one tab while making the purchase on Zappos.com in another tab, but that’s too simple of an explanation. To borrow the term Dave Coustan used when I Twittered about this: creepy. At this point, I have more questions than answers:

1. What does Zappos or Facebook think there is to gain by sharing my purchase with the masses?
2. What does that icon to the left of my name mean? (I can’t click on it anymore since I deleted it from my feed.)
3. How the heck did it get there?

I’m not ashamed of my shoe purchase. It just isn’t something I consider newsworthy. I’ve never bought anything from Zappos, but have read great things about them and I thought this would be a good opportunity to give them a try. I’ll be curious as to what kind of feedback I get from either group.

In the meantime, I think my shoes are supposed to arrive today. Then what? Do I upload a photo of them and create a Facebook album to show them off?