Heh. I figured Facebook’s data portability “initiative” was nothing more than panicked lip service. Today they’ve banned Google Friend Connect from the Facebook API.

Here’s the funny part: they say it’s because Google Friend Connect “redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users’ knowledge.” Ha! Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! Remember the outrage over Facebook’s spammy “social ad platform”? That thing turned users into product endorsers without their permission, by default! Now here’s Facebook accusing Google of something far more benign — something opt-in and per-site, to boot.

I met two non-techie college girls at Starbucks yesterday. Both of them use Facebook as their primary social network. When I told them Mark Zuckerberg thinks Facebook is worth $15 billion, they immediately concluded that he was insane. As data portability sweeps social networking, the networks that link up with the most other networks will become the go-to places. They will become the primary places where you store your stuff, from your photos to your friends, so you can use your stuff anywhere else. They will become the most valuable social networks. Facebook is moving in the opposite direction so Zuckerface can maintain his delusions of value in his little walled garden. Even non-techie college girls can tell he’s nuts.

Hey Fuckerberg, I manually retype my Facebook events into my Google Calendar. I’m doing what Friend Connect wants to do: give Google my Facebook data with my permission. Are you going to ban me too?

Post from: EveryJoe

Facebook Banning Friend Connect is Hypocrisy

One of the most annoying things about maintaining a social network profile is having to manually repost updates from that profile to other services you use. Most of these social networks just don’t want to share, doing everything they can to lock their users into their little information silos.

Just as I was tediously retyping a party invitation from Facebook to Google Calendar for the nth time, a ray of hope appeared. MySpace announces their first steps towards data portability. They’ll start by letting users optionally pipe their MySpace data to Yahoo, Twitter, eBay, and Photobucket. They’ll be using open standards to do it, too — no Facebook-style proprietary crap.

The world’s biggest social network has found its lead under threat of late, so they’re finding another way to stay on top in a world where people increasingly mix and match services: play nice with those services. They’re partnering with just four sites right now, but it’s a good start.

MySpace is such a giant in this space that competitors will have no choice but to follow suit. People like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg may think customers are too stupid to care about something as “geeky” as data portability, but more and more people using more and more services will easily see the advantages of not having to repost their crap over and over and over again. I look forward to the day when any online service I authorize can use open APIs to pull my data from any social network.

Until then, I’m sprucing up my long-neglected MySpace profile. I’d rather put my content and my social graph where I can use it anywhere I choose. So should you.

Post from: EveryJoe

MySpace Data Portability Will Change Social Networking