No doubt, Facebook never anticipated such an uproar. Faced with its second mass protest by members in its short life span, Facebook, the enormously popular social networking Web site, is reining in some aspects of a controversial new advertising program. Within the last 10 days, more than 50,000 Facebook members have signed a petition objecting [...]

Facebook may have overestimated how acceptable their new Beacon ads would be for members. But it is one thing for members to decide voluntarily to reveal private, personal information and yet something else for Facebook to enable the commercial exploitation of such information. David Utter reports on the backlash: One-time online darlings in social networking [...]