eBay is one of 44 websites that are using Facebook's new Beacon program to allow users to share information from their websites for distribution to users' friends on Facebook. Facebook calls Beacon "a core element of the Facebook Ads system for connecting businesses with users and targeting advertising to the audiences they want."

When users who are logged into Facebook visit a participating site, they receive a prompt asking whether to they want to share those activities with their friends on Facebook. If they do, those friends can now view those actions through News Feed or Mini-Feed stories.

eBay plans to use Beacon so eBay.com sellers will be able to choose to include their eBay listings in their Facebook News Feeds. This will allow them to share the items they are selling with their network of friends. In doing so, eBay.com sellers can leverage a new way to drive potential bidders and buyers to their listings. eBay expects to make this feature available to sellers on eBay.com in early 2008.

"Beacon offers an interesting new way for us to deliver on our goal of bringing more bidders and buyers to our sellers' listings," said Gary Briggs, senior vice president and chief marketing officer, eBay North America. "In a marketplace where trust and reputation are crucial to success, giving sellers the ability to easily alert their network of friends - the people who already know and trust them - to an item for sale has the potential to be a powerful tool."

Facebook said Beacon provides advanced privacy controls so Facebook users can decide whether to distribute specific actions from participating sites with their friends.