Friend's purchases: Brilliant, but Facebook's 1.0 doesn't fly

Facebook's widely covered Beacon advertising program, allowing "friends" to see your purchases as soon as you make them, is brilliant in concept, fatally flawed in execution. But it will come. The brilliance--obvious once in the market--is that most of us really do want to buy things our friends buy. Not to be like our friends (well, at least for the sane among us), but because we know how our friends make decisions. And if a friend with an acceptable decision process and criteria similar to mine buys a Dell Latitude or 8 GB iPod or electronic gopher trap or flight on Virgin America--I'm done. I'm ready to go. This isn't theoretical. We have several friends that have told us that if my wife and I buy something for our son, they want it. Sight unseen. We've even been asked to "just buy two." Like so many who write or read blogs, I have myriad friends who will buy whatever computer or accessory I've bought to to avoid having to do research. So with yesterday's announcement, Beacon 1.0 is dead, but Beacon will come. Or better yet, understanding my friends' decisions about purchases will come. I can't wait. Facebook's "1.0" version is too intrusive, sensitive, and...well...downright creepy. If we follow the usual rule about when a Microsoft product is worth buying, I can't wait for the 4.0 version. It'll save me a ton of time.