[cs702]

Some advertisers are getting much better results with Facebook ads than with Google AdWords -- for instance, see http://jeffmatthewsisnotmakingthisup.blogspot.com/2012/01/is...

(Money quote from that link: "...according to a friend in retailing, the average Facebook woman updates her relationship status to 'Engaged' within two hours of the guy actually proposing…so Facebook sells that relationship status information to retailers who have bridal registries. As my pal told me, 'We’ve been looking for this for fifty years.'")

[koalaman]

http://www.facebook.com/legal/terms

"We do not give your content or information to advertisers without your consent."

[ceejayoz]

May have just been an inelegantly worded way of saying "we can target people for Facebook ads on this sort of variable". Facebook doesn't have to release the "so-and-so got married" information to the advertiser, they just have to show that demographic the ads.

[cs702]

...which consent most consumers will blindly give by clicking on whatever button they must click to get to their Facebook page... without ever reading such legal terms.

[cs702]

...which in turns reminds me of this classic incident of regular people trying but unable to login to Facebook: http://ryankuder.posterous.com/facebook-users-think-readwrit...

[Update: I'll submit this as a link. It's a classic.]