You may have recently seen in the news or on your newsfeed that Facebook may owe you money due to a recent class action lawsuit against sponsored stories. As a small business owner, you may be utilizing this tool and are curious how it’s going to affect you or are concerned about the ethics involved. Well, the good news for you is that it has nothing to do with businesses’ sponsored stories. The lawsuit is for individuals who were featured as a sponsored story, without their permission. What happened was Facebook took a user’s likes and turned them into ads that showed up on their friend’s newsfeeds. This violated privacy issues and was an issue when sponsored stories first were released.
We still stick with our original post, and fully support that sponsored stories is a great way for businesses to be promoted on Facebook. If you think that you might be owed money, you have until May 2nd to submit or remove yourself from the claim. As of now, it looks like each Facebook user will receive 10 dollars as compensation. Please do not allow this to impact the way you use Facebook. At Surefire Social we continually see supporting documentation that Facebook is one of the best social media sites on the market for small businesses. Sponsored Stories is a great way to reach a much broader audience that you normally couldn’t reach.
For nearly three decades, Chris Marentis, Founder and CEO of Surefire Social, has been responsible for driving innovation and sales growth for large media and e-commerce brands as well as start-ups. With a long-history of counseling local businesses about their marketing efforts, Marentis provides insight on what it takes for small businesses to succeed and thrive in today’s evolving digital environment. His notable career includes creating the foundational blueprints for online marketing, e-commerce and content branding for AOL’s Interactive Marketing group, where he served as Senior Vice President. While CEO of Clearspring Technologies, Marentis developed one of the most widely adopted venture-backed Web 2.0 technology platforms. Marentis is a frequent speaker at local digital marketing conferences and a contributor to SMB and technology-focused publications.
