Facebook's 1.5 billion active users every month may as well help the social giant bring in money. And this is precisely what Facebook has done. Since the like and share buttons are already everywhere, this already makes Facebook a tool for promoting and advertising content and many other things. But, as it turned out, the two buttons are also the company's means of collecting information about a user's search history.
On Sept 16, Wednesday last week, Facebook announced in a blog post that the company is introducing new tools to let users have control over what ads they want and don't want to see in their feed. The newly-launched "Advert Preferences" page is said to give users "master control" over what appears in their feed and it lets Facebook roll out ads that are based on the user's preference.
The ad control feature is not entirely new to Facebook, as it has first introduced it last year. This time around, the company says that it wants to offer the service to Facebook users around the world with the Advert Preferences page. The company has also promoted AdChoices, a program from the Digital Advertising Alliance. Facebook expressed that it will continue supporting the program and other similar software for Android and iOS.
But of course, the company wants users to opt for its Advert Preference page. Facebook is developing the feature further by using information it has gotten from the like and share habits of its users. Apart from that, Facebook also has access to information even without the user actually hitting on like and share. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the buttons are actually "social plug-ins" which run a script on pages browsed by users and then record the information. This works for as long as the user is online on Facebook.
"We hope that the ads people see will continue to become more useful and relevant and that this new control will make it easier for people to have the ads experience they want." Facebook Global Deputy Chief Officer Stephen Deadman wrote on the post.
