The story in the newspaper is about a surprise that was ruined by Facebook’s new “Beacon” feature.  You know, the feature that allows Facebook advertisers to put up an ad on your friends’ pages alerting them to recent purchases you’ve made.  One embarrassed guy saw the surprise jewelry gift he had planned for his wife “ruined” when it was announced to her when she logged in to the site.

But the real story is about the surprise for Web 2.0 junkies who thought that all the free services that companies like Facebook provide maybe ain’t so free after all.  Apparently, our collective acceptance of google-ads, pop-ups, dancers promoting lower interest rates, little flash videos, and so forth says that we think the commercials are worth the information and services that we get for free.  But once the SQL servers start creating ads with our data, well, that crosses a line.  It takes a little shine off the Internet party when a billboard above the fireplace starts flashing data on where we bought our underwear, for how much, and invites the partygoers to make a similar purchase of their own.

Surprised?  I’m not.  When “old media” tycoons like Rupert Murdoch pay half-a-billion dollars for a social networking site like MySpace, you can surmise that he sees financial gain in it.  Half a billion is a lot to pay for a name, some software and servers, and a squirrelly bunch of teenage “users.”  Unless you see a big payday somewhere down the line.

Surprise!  Since you have input your likes, dislikes, and lured all your friends to sign up and sign in, I’m guessing that the terms of service you agreed to without reading them gives MySpace the right to use that information in just about any way they want, as long as they don’t, heaven forbid, sell that information to anyone else.  That was one way that folks imagined that they would be able to monetize their social networking investment but it hasn’t panned out.  And why should it?  These new service providers decided “why sell the information?”  It’s more valuable to keep it for themselves.  And it allows them to adopt the holier-than-thou position that they would never sell your information to anyone.  No one.  Ever.  But that’s because it is just plain too valuable to them, in business terms.

I guess we just didn’t see that one coming.  Surprise.