The Business Web 2.0
As CEO of business-based social networking site WeCanDo.BIZ, read my take on the role Web 2.0 technologies can play helping businesses to grow.
Thursday 15 May 2008, 10:03 PM
Google Friend Connect already unravelling?
Just 3 days after Google seemed to have Web 2.0 enabled the whole WWW, it seems its plans for data portability have taken a knock-back. Facebook has written a blog post revealing they have banned Google Friend Connect from accessing its API and access to user data on its site.
TechCrunch has revealed that Facebook believes that Friend Connect breaches its Terms of Service by passing user data about without the user's knowledge:
"Now that Google has launched Friend Connect, we’ve had a chance to evaluate the technology. We’ve found that it redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users’ knowledge, which doesn’t respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our Terms of Service. Just as we’ve been forced to do for other applications that redistribute data in a way users might not expect or understand, we’ve had to suspend Friend Connect’s access to Facebook user information until it comes into compliance. We’ve reached out to Google several times about this issue, and hope to work with them to enable users to share their data exactly when and where they choose."
Exactly how it thinks it violates its ToS is not very clear, as Google Friend Connect doesn't seem a whole lot different from Facebook Connect announced 3 days earlier.
The only way Facebook seems to have value as an organisation is from the number of people on its site and the advertising it is trying to make money from, so it seemed a little strange to me that it would allow others to take its prized assets and place them with others. The whole data portability thing feels too good to be true, although great news for other sites on the web that can benefit from Facebook's community dropping by.
I hope the matter gets resolved, although maybe it will keep the situation stalled for long enough for someone else to come along and present a better way of doing the whole thing -- such as an independent site holding user information and authorising social networks to use it, but it stays in the possession of the independent, chosen by the user...
I'll keep you posted.
Ian Hendry
WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
PreviousComments on this post
Good info, thanks. This will be interesting to watch, both for the general concept of sharing and portability of this kind of data, and the specific dealings between Google and Facebook.
Indeed it will. What I should have mentioned is that when GFC was first announced MySpace was not confirmed as a participant, although they are OpenSocial supporters (OpenSocial underpins a lot of what Google Friend Connect does).
Without these two on-board you have to wonder what GFC is worth. Certainly less than Facebook Connect and whatever MySpace announced as its equivalent.
Ian Hendry
WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
