.jpg "Why Facebook borrowed $100 million for servers")
Valleywag
Illustrious egoblogger Robert Scoble, the Paris Hilton of Silicon Valley, has committed the geek equivalent of a DUI. He has, by his own admission, violated Facebook's terms of service, and had his account suspended — 5,000 friends and all. Scoble's sin? He used a script to export his Facebook address-book information to Plaxo, which runs a competing social network. Running such scripts has long been forbidden, though Scoble argues Facebook should open up its information. Unlikely, given Facebook's history.
What Scoble forgets is that when Facebook was just a college project of Zuckerberg's, long before he raised any venture capital, he fought a running battle with the founders of ConnectU. While they sued him for allegedly ripping off their code, Zuckerberg's Facebook sued them over their attempts to grab data from Facebook. To this day, Facebook encodes email addresses as a graphic image, annoying users who'd like to copy and paste the information — but also frustrating automated scripts which, like ConnectU, would attempt to steal away Facebook's users.
Plaxo is one of many companies which believe that social-network data should be open and portable. Facebook — informed by the ConnectU experience — disagrees. What's true is that companies like Plaxo are envious of Facebook's success, and in arguing for openness, aren't pursuing high-minded ideals — they're seeking commercial advantage. "Open" is just another word for "gimme."
And Scoble? In acting the martyr, he's playing right into their hands. Sad to say, his massive list of "friends" isn't coming in handy. Only 284 people have joined a group petitioning for Scoble's reinstatement.
(Photo of Robert Scoble by scriptingnews; photomontage licensed under Creative Commons)
Comments
But at least now we can finally do the math. 1 Facebook friend = 1/20th of 1% of 1 real friend (i.e. Scoble needed 17.6 Facebook friends to find one that would actually sign a petition for him).
Scoblarious!
First he goes frugal on Beacon, then preaches granular privacy control (GPC) and now wants to scrape all my info/profile to republish on a platform without GPC, because maybe he's one of those why might see my complete profile, instead of most who only have access to a carefully GPC'ed profile.
Oh wait, he only sees my limited profile anyway as I'm no part of his gaggle.
@WagCurious: a) I don't get your math; b) I'm sure Scoble's "friends" are worth much much less than most people's Facebook friends.
There's a Firefox extension (that I wrote) that decodes those e-mail address images into plain text: [www.chrisfinke.com]
Great Paris/Scoble Pic
[www.mahalo.com]
Fear the Scolaxo virus!
[techmerkin.wordpress.com]
Its like he has to do this crap to have something to talk about. I mean no one cares about his stupid videos, but they'll all link to him for being an idiot.
I guess this means he won't become the Facebook Evangelist, he so earnestly campaigned for. Anything Scoble is spam anyways, he's just culling data, blogger-penis-enlargement style.
@Hraesvelg: Scoble has a penis? WTF !!!
Well, literally, not so sure. But penis as ego, yeah.
Scoble's opponents are totally missing the point. As part of the action of inviting Scoble to be my friend (or accepting an invite to be his) I gave him the right to see my email address and contact me. Facebook's "you can revoke that right at any time" is like asking to see the prices on the menu after you ordered and ate the food. (ok, the other image I had involved an adult theme)
Once someone gets to see it, it's out there and you can't take it back. Ask anyone in a relationship who says something and then wanted to take it back. Facebook is building a business on a principle that you surrender any rights you have to information because you choose to use their free service.
So it's ok in your book for Facebook to scrape other sites for information, use it in ways that the web operator and the user un-intended but god forbid someone chooses to exercise their rights to information.
Here is an item to ponder. If I gave you a business card, but the card has a disclaimer that you cannot mechanically or electronically reproduce it, do you have the right to drop it into your cardscan scanner to add it to your Outlook?
If you say you don't have that right, do you think you have the right to transcribe that information yourself into an outlook contact card by entering it at the keyboard (either yourself, or by contracting services to enter the data for you).
Where does the line get drawn, or do I go back to drawing on the walls of my cave instead of the wall at Facebook. BTW get all those dammed anthropologist out of my cave, those drawings are (c) 10,000BC by ME .. Didn't you understand the squiggle, dash, dash, and circle as my copyright symbol?
Scoble is over exposed and border lines on errrrrrrrrrrr. >:\
How can Facebook criticize Plaxo for doing exactly what they have been doing by extracting address books from Yahoo and Gmail? You can't have it both ways. It's hypocritical.
And, from a user's point of view, the information in my address book and friend list are MY property and I should be able to move it between whichever services I choose. Of course, the services have the right to be closed-minded about this, but users will eventually vote with their shoes.
Start a discussion:
Login with your username and password below. Or comment on this post via email.
Forgot your username or password? New User?