A few days back we wrote about Google’s Friend Connect and how it had partnered with Facebook to create what seemed to be like a happy marriage. Everyone was raving about the Internet becoming more Social – it still is anyway with networks opening themselves up and carrying information elsewhere.
How many of you watch have watched F.R.I.E.N.D.S? And how many of you remember that episode in which Ross and Rachel get married in a drunken stupor? (If you don’t there’s a video down there – just scroll to the end!
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=-JW0CNL1uNw[/youtube]
Seems like Facebook and Google got into something like that. Facebook has now called off its participation in Google Friend Connect.
Here’s what Charlie Cheever said on the Facebook Developers Blog:
“Privacy and openness go hand-in-hand – as we open up, we have to make sure that users always have control of their information, and understand how and where it’s being used. We’ve maintained that trusted environment while opening up Facebook Platform and the social graph to external developers by requiring third-party application developers to treat user information with the same respect we do. All Facebook Platform developers agree to the Developer Terms of Service, which strictly limit the collection, use, and redistribution of user information. We have technology and a team to ensure applications abide by those policies. In the past, when we found applications passing user data to another party (for instance, to ad networks for the purpose of targeting), we suspended those applications and worked with those developers to ensure they respect user privacy. 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.”
(I love how Facebook cares so much about our ‘privacy’ – or rather only about them having access to our private data)
To make it simple – it seems like users will not be able to control the kind of data that flows out of Facebook and it also seems like Facebook will not have any control either. So Google will have access to some of the information that Facebook already ‘owns’ (which is why it is so highly valued).
We had questioned how this move makes sense for Facebook from a strategy perspective given that they too are launching Facebook Connect. It doesn’t – or the scales aren’t tilted in their favour, which is why they have called it off. Expect something like Friend Connect from Facebook as well. With that they will get a larger share of the pie and also be able to continue their recent policy of communication flowing into the network from external sources and portability of profiles to external sources.
It’s funny – MySpace, Google, and Facebook all want to make the web more ‘social’ but they can do this only by blocking each other access into the reams of information they possess.
Digging for information is like digging into a Gold Mine.
