Stefan Mileschin

Facebook is sailing into a new privacy storm after it was revealed that the social notworking site was giving its favoured advertisers information on users' "likes."

According to the Sydney Morning Herald , Facebook is letting "priority" marketers use an internal tool that shows them which other pages their own fans like.

This means that the minions of the advertising company know what TV shows their fans watch, which brands they buy and which bands they listen to.

All this was found by AdWeek which said that Facebook's extra special business partners were getting access to the tool for now.

Facebook said that the tool will help marketeeers build better campaigns, Facebook offers aggregated insights to managed clients that help them understand trends about their fan bases, a spokeswoman for the company is made to say.

There are some limits. The tools do not provide marketeers with any data about their competitors' fan bases, but do allow them to gather collective data.

At the moment, Facebook is making marketers come to their offices to access it.

If the tool does go mainstream it will help companies decide which TV show to advertise on or which song to use in a commercial.

Facebook has not said if it plans to offer the tool to all its advertising clients, but it could prove to be another valuable source of revenue for the social network if it did.

http://news.techeye.net/internet/fac...ers-your-likes