It used to be that a woman’s worst nightmare was walking into a party and seeing someone wearing the exact same outfit. In order to avoid that fate, women have resorted to a number of tactics, including the occasional little white lie, when asked about favorite shopping haunts or the exact store where fabulous shoes or chi-chi handbags were bought. Now, thanks to Facebook and a few enterprising advertisers, many of your shopping secrets may now be a thing of the past. Every time you make a “social action,” be it reviewing a restaurant or installing a 3rd party app—your image is immediately game for advertisers to use. Sure, you may have elected to share your social actions, but nowhere were you informed that your mug may pop up in an ad for everyone to see. Maybe that sounds harmless to you, but in addition to having never been asked, I’ll bet that no one ever offered to pay you for the use of your face and de facto product endorsement.

Advertisers call this “social network marketing” and are banking on the fact that the Facebook community, which has in the past not responded well to advertising, doesn’t turn a blind eye to seeing their friends hawking products. (Not to mention the fact that advertisers can save a boatload of money by essentially getting customers to be the creative.) But the uproar over Beacon should have clued Facebook into the fact that this community, which has grown massively as a result of its permission-based practices, doesn’t much welcome the intrusion of advertisers – especially when it is an advertising bankshot via their friends (see Michael Arrington’s Facebook: Why Not Let Sleeping Dogs Lie).

The press has hinted lately that Facebook and MySpace may be losing some of their luster and have suggested that some Facebookers have outgrown the community. Maybe it’s more like this once safe place to interact with friends is becoming more and more like the rest of the advertising-laden internet and is now a turn-off. Remember when Facebookers only had to worry about pics from the sorority party being emailed to employers? Well, now they have to worry about being exploited by Madison Avenue. The first situation is easier to remedy; the second may be a step toward the slippery slope of turning social networking into just another slick advertising ruse.