Friday 21 January 2011

Facebook's No3 advertiser is Microsoft search hjacker

Adage has detailed Facebook's growing advertising pool. Here's a chart of social networking's biggest ad sources..

Something that has caught the eye of many is Make-my-Baby.com, and well it might. Make-My-Baby.com is a spyware company that has gone from selling cell phone owners auto-recurring fees of $10-$20 each month, to peddling software that sets homepage and default search on browsers to Microsoft's Bing.

It is a site that allows you to put eyeglasses and mustaches on top of a funny looking baby's face. Hilarious. Well, that is what it seems to be….before you can do anything the site says you have to install "a browser plug-in to present an enhanced experience." If you do so, according to the fine print, your browser's default search and home page will be switched to Bing. Once you do so, the affiliate company behind the toolbar, called Zugo, will capture a slice of the revenue whenever you click on a search ad.

At best, Facebook is showing billions (literally) of spyware ads that trick users into installing browser-hijacking software.

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