Facebook admits mistakes over internet ad system

Popular social networking site Facebook has been forced to apologise to its users about the way it implemented a new advertising system.

The website´s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, said that Facebook had "made a lot of mistakes" with the design and building of its new online advertising system, called Beacon.

Beacon was supposed to display a user´s purchases on their wall and so create a personalised advertising system.

However, thousands of Facebook users were unhappy about the way they had to opt out on an individual basis if they did not want to promote a product or service.

Many joined groups protesting the system and such was the anger that Zuckerberg was forced to concede that the system was flawed.

On the Facebook blog he wrote: "We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it. While I am disappointed with our mistakes, we appreciate all the feedback we have received from our users."

"Last week we changed Beacon to be an opt-in system, and today (December 5th) we´re releasing a privacy control to turn off Beacon completely."
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