Facebook lets users turn off Beacon ad system

Roughly one month ago Facebook unveiled its new advertising system, dubbed Beacon. The system tracks certain actions of Facebook users on some external sites in order to report those actions back to a users’ friends network in Facebook.

The idea is to generate viral “word-of-mouth” marketing campaigns that are intricately combined with people’s social circle. But the system has been heavily criticized for being too intrusive and a violation of privacy. Today, Facebook finally bowed to pressure from users and privacy advocates and has agreed to let its users turn off its controversial advertising system. The move comes nearly a week after Facebook changed the system from opt-out to opt-in.

While the popularity of Facebook continues to rise, the company is still struggling to find better ways to translate that into profitability through advertising. But apparently, Beacon is not the answer.