Facebook’s Partnership with Target Stores: Is this leading to its work thwarting a Boycott effort?

As news reports emerge that Facebook is preventing a group boycotting Target Stores for its political positions able to use the social network’s functionality, it’s important to connect its business relationship with the chain store.   Facebook recently made a deal with Target as part of its marketing push for its virtual “Credits” currency.  The growing relationship of the biggest brands and Facebook, and what happens to our information and how these companies get preferred treatment, must be on the policy and advocates agenda. Politico reported that: “As the number of Facebook members signed up for the “Boycott Target Until They Cease Funding Anti-Gay Politics” page neared 78,000 in recent days, Facebook personnel locked down portions of the page — banning new discussion threads, preventing members from posting videos and standard Web links to other sites and barring the page’s administrator from sending updates to those who signed up for the boycott.”

Facebook and Target stores are new partners, something which may explain its censorious efforts.  Inside Facebook also recently reported:“Following recent efforts by Zynga, Playdom and other social gaming companies to launch pre-paid cards for virtual goods in stores, Facebook is going direct — starting this Sunday, it will allow users to buy pre-paid cards for its virtual currency, Credits, within 1,743 Target retail locations across the US and on Target.com.

Cards can be purchased in $15, $25 and $50 increments, similar pricing to what you’ll see for a wide variety of other pre-paid game cards already available in Targets and other stores around the country.

Facebook itself is also helping to push the new integration, by including a Target store finder on its official Credits splash page. When users click on the “Redeem Gift Card” in the Facebook Credits gift cards section of the Credits page, they’ll see a popup window asking them to enter the scratch-off number on the back of the Credits card. Clicking “Redeem Now” will add the amount of Credits purchased to their Facebook account.”