Mike Arrington is Right, Facebook is Wrong

May 16, 2008 By

Mike Arrington and I had a sometimes violent disagreement on today’s Gillmor Gang.

The reason we were arguing? Because we both were arguing different things.

Mike Arrington was arguing that Facebook was in the wrong for blocking Google Friend Connect (and therefor I was wrong).

I was arguing that if you 1. Friend me AND 2. Give me your email address that I should be able to put that email address into whatever system I so please, just like when you hand me your business card (and therefor that Arrington was wrong).

Problem is, that it took a bit of yelling and screaming for us to realize we were arguing about different things. During the show I put my phone on mute and took a shower (actually true) and when I came back on I took a different tactic and agreed with Mike on the first issue.

On the second issue he’s still wrong, but we’ll get to argue that one out again some other day.

Truth be told I thought that Google pulled email addresses into Friend Connect. I was wrong. Google doesn’t.

So, Facebook is totally over the top wrong to block Google.

But, lately, Facebook has been on the wrong side of the block button. Whoever runs that button is really hurting Facebook’s brand and not doing Facebook any favors.

So, let’s back up and split this argument into a few pieces and argue about those separately in three groups:

1. Your social graph (IE, the map of who your friends are).
2. Your friends’ info (IE, their email addresses, their birthdays, their relationship status, their political leanings, their gender, their favorite music and activities, and other stuff you’ll find on, say, Facebook’s profile).
3. Your actual data. Say your photos, your videos, your status updates, and your wall posts.

If you’re going to talk about social network portability you MUST keep these three things separate.

Why? Because of user expectations.

So, what are our user expectations around the social graph? Well, Facebook already makes those almost totally public. I can see the social graphs of people who haven’t even friended me. That said, there are a few people who’ve blocked me from seeing who their friends are, but only a handful of people have done that.

How about user expectations around your friends’ info? Well, if you friend me and give me access to your data, you should expect me to use that data, even outside of Facebook. But there are some users who don’t want you to take that data outside of Facebook. Arrington’s one of those.

How about your actual data? User expectations here are far different. We want to have control of our own data, and we don’t expect other users to be able to copy our photos or videos to other places.

So, basically, Mike Arrington and I agree on the social graph. You should be able to take your list of friends, their avatars, and their names to any other social network.

We disagree on our info like email addresses and such. I don’t think we’ll ever agree there.

I believe we agree on the control of our actual data.

How about you? Do you agree with this assessment? Do you get as passionate about this stuff as Mike and I did?

UPDATE: Marc Canter says “I do not compromise” and posted a bunch of pictures of his backyard fence which is most interesting.

Filed Under: technology industry Tagged With: ,
← Older Comments
Newer Comments →
  • Fakebook

    Stay away from Fakebook, it is already controlled by M$.

    Please Google, rename Orkut to something more commercial and take it out of beta NOW!!!1!

    Before it is too late…

  • Fakebook

    Stay away from Fakebook, it is already controlled by M$.

    Please Google, rename Orkut to something more commercial and take it out of beta NOW!!!1!

    Before it is too late…

  • Pingback: metarand » Blog Archive » Flushing The Data Portaloo: The Looming Portability Squareoff With Users

  • http://mflinsch.wordpress.com/ mflinsch

    When I add date to facebook, about my interests and other personal attributes, that data is still MINE. I provide a relevant monetizable feed of personal attributes that I grant facebook permission to mine and otherwise exploit. But the information is still mine. My friends’ information is theirs. So I absolutely expect that the data I share is portable and that the companies that I kindly grant a business model to will allow me to travel around with my personal data stream.

    The interesting question is whether I can port my friend’s data into my choice of venues for my personal use, and whether the providers of that service can then re-monetize that data stream. Facebook is right to protect their business model, but wrong to try to calaim ownership of my data.

    But then I’m a data protability advocate, and working in health care that’s a good thing for you since I’m working on the inside to ensure that your medical data is yours.

  • http://mflinsch.wordpress.com/ mflinsch

    When I add date to facebook, about my interests and other personal attributes, that data is still MINE. I provide a relevant monetizable feed of personal attributes that I grant facebook permission to mine and otherwise exploit. But the information is still mine. My friends’ information is theirs. So I absolutely expect that the data I share is portable and that the companies that I kindly grant a business model to will allow me to travel around with my personal data stream.

    The interesting question is whether I can port my friend’s data into my choice of venues for my personal use, and whether the providers of that service can then re-monetize that data stream. Facebook is right to protect their business model, but wrong to try to calaim ownership of my data.

    But then I’m a data protability advocate, and working in health care that’s a good thing for you since I’m working on the inside to ensure that your medical data is yours.

  • http://mflinsch.wordpress.com/ mflinsch

    When I add data to facebook, about my interests and other personal attributes, that data is still MINE. I provide a relevant monetizable feed of personal attributes that I grant facebook permission to mine and otherwise exploit. But the information is still mine. My friends’ information is theirs. So I absolutely expect that the data I share is portable and that the companies that I kindly grant a business model to will allow me to travel around with my personal data stream.

    The interesting question is whether I can port my friend’s data into my choice of venues for my personal use, and whether the providers of that service can then re-monetize that data stream. Facebook is right to protect their business model, but wrong to try to calaim ownership of my data.

    But then I’m a data protability advocate, and working in health care that’s a good thing for you since I’m working on the inside to ensure that your medical data is yours.

  • http://mflinsch.wordpress.com/ mflinsch

    When I add data to facebook, about my interests and other personal attributes, that data is still MINE. I provide a relevant monetizable feed of personal attributes that I grant facebook permission to mine and otherwise exploit. But the information is still mine. My friends’ information is theirs. So I absolutely expect that the data I share is portable and that the companies that I kindly grant a business model to will allow me to travel around with my personal data stream.

    The interesting question is whether I can port my friend’s data into my choice of venues for my personal use, and whether the providers of that service can then re-monetize that data stream. Facebook is right to protect their business model, but wrong to try to calaim ownership of my data.

    But then I’m a data protability advocate, and working in health care that’s a good thing for you since I’m working on the inside to ensure that your medical data is yours.

  • Pingback: Mike Arrington is wrong, but not about Facebook « Paying Attention

  • http://www.chrissaad.com/ Chris Saad
  • http://www.chrissaad.com Chris Saad
  • Prokofy

    First sensible thing I’ve seen on this. Thank you. Simple. Divide them into 3 things, and put 3 on or 3,2 or 3,2,1. Geez, why was that so hard?! Funny how it took a long time to come to that and interesting Scoble who has the most friends on FB came to it.

    So…There’s only one dilemma left. On the one hand, I feel strongly proximity data (who your friends are, who you are having one-to-one chats with) shouldn’t be scrapeable and exportable.

    That’s what happened to get ppl in SL mad at the SL data guy who tracked 96 m chats and broadcast who was chatting with whom or even merely next to whom and broke up relationships, etc. That was in a 3-D world. But that doesn’t obviate the point, since SL is where we are prototyping all the social media apps in fact.

    So on FB do I want someone else to see who I’ve friended? Well, no. That is, I should have to opt into that, no? But…how will I ever find friends to fill up the news feed with interesting stuff if I can’t mind my friends’ friends and see their graph? I just don’t have a solution to this. I’d simply like to be able to click a radio button on each friend “show in my network” or “don’t show in my network”.

  • Prokofy

    First sensible thing I’ve seen on this. Thank you. Simple. Divide them into 3 things, and put 3 on or 3,2 or 3,2,1. Geez, why was that so hard?! Funny how it took a long time to come to that and interesting Scoble who has the most friends on FB came to it.

    So…There’s only one dilemma left. On the one hand, I feel strongly proximity data (who your friends are, who you are having one-to-one chats with) shouldn’t be scrapeable and exportable.

    That’s what happened to get ppl in SL mad at the SL data guy who tracked 96 m chats and broadcast who was chatting with whom or even merely next to whom and broke up relationships, etc. That was in a 3-D world. But that doesn’t obviate the point, since SL is where we are prototyping all the social media apps in fact.

    So on FB do I want someone else to see who I’ve friended? Well, no. That is, I should have to opt into that, no? But…how will I ever find friends to fill up the news feed with interesting stuff if I can’t mind my friends’ friends and see their graph? I just don’t have a solution to this. I’d simply like to be able to click a radio button on each friend “show in my network” or “don’t show in my network”.

  • Prokofy

    >the least evil, most open platform – by necessity – wins. Walled gardens lose – hard, fast, and decisively.

    Good Lord, that’s arrogant and dense. There is nothing inherently evil in walled gardens whatsoever. In fact, open is often the destructive and evil thing. Walled gardens protect a lot of things that in fact people want protected.

  • Prokofy

    >the least evil, most open platform – by necessity – wins. Walled gardens lose – hard, fast, and decisively.

    Good Lord, that’s arrogant and dense. There is nothing inherently evil in walled gardens whatsoever. In fact, open is often the destructive and evil thing. Walled gardens protect a lot of things that in fact people want protected.

  • Pingback: TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » 本日のGillmor Gang：「データ主導権争いを語る」

  • scott

    If I expose my personal information to someone they have no right to publish *any* of that information anywhere else without my explicit permission.

  • scott

    If I expose my personal information to someone they have no right to publish *any* of that information anywhere else without my explicit permission.

  • http://www.LiveSide.net Kip Kniskern – LiveSide.net

    I agree with Prokofy, that there’s nothing inherently wrong with walled gardens. In fact in this upcoming era of open everything, the walled garden, where data is secure and relationships are private, could be the new $15B thing – which I think is part of what Facebook is trying to protect.

    There’s a difference between the kind of data portability that means I as the user can take my social graph and my data (which I worked so hard to craft) and use it somewhere else (or release it to the world), and the kind of data portability that means anyone with an API can come and mine my relationships for their own purposes. Especially if those relationships were created under the guise of a walled garden, only to be opened up without my explicit consent.

  • http://www.liveside.net kip

    I agree with Prokofy, that there’s nothing inherently wrong with walled gardens. In fact in this upcoming era of open everything, the walled garden, where data is secure and relationships are private, could be the new $15B thing – which I think is part of what Facebook is trying to protect.

    There’s a difference between the kind of data portability that means I as the user can take my social graph and my data (which I worked so hard to craft) and use it somewhere else (or release it to the world), and the kind of data portability that means anyone with an API can come and mine my relationships for their own purposes. Especially if those relationships were created under the guise of a walled garden, only to be opened up without my explicit consent.

  • Pingback: Data Privacy and the Internet « The Brain Machine

  • http://bloghh.wordpress.com/ Herschel

    From my post on the subject:
    “Data Utopia” is not here today. Every social application user must use their own judgement when giving their person information out to web sites on the Internet.

    Here’s the full blog post: http://bloghh.wordpress.com/2008/05/16/data-privacy-and-the-internet/

    It’s not a simple problem. It will require thoughtful solutions!

  • http://bloghh.wordpress.com Herschel

    From my post on the subject:
    “Data Utopia” is not here today. Every social application user must use their own judgement when giving their person information out to web sites on the Internet.

    Here’s the full blog post: http://bloghh.wordpress.com/2008/05/16/data-privacy-and-the-internet/

    It’s not a simple problem. It will require thoughtful solutions!

  • Pingback: What is data? at Liako.Biz

  • http://searchengines.wordpress.com/ SearchEngines
  • http://searchengines.wordpress.com/ SearchEngines
  • http://blog.rfquerin.org/ Richard Querin

    Finally someone (Herschel) has put the ball in the right hands. It’s the users who must use their own judgment. In this, the stone age of online social tools, you simply don’t have the control tools in place. You can ‘blue-sky’ about it all you want, but right now if you don’t want your data shared, mined, or otherwise used by third parties, then simply don’t post, share or publish it. Anywhere. As long as you are handing data to third-parties, if you’re not happy about it, your only choice is to vote with your feet. And if all the players are ‘bad citizens’ then tough luck. We’ll have to build our own trusted system.

    Where the hell was Doc on this call ?? If ever there was a time for the voice of reason, this was it. ;)

    ps. MA’s concept about someone’s business card coming to me with some sort of implicit contract is utter paranoid bullshit. It’s up to him to decide who he hands it out to.

  • http://blog.rfquerin.org Richard Querin

    Finally someone (Herschel) has put the ball in the right hands. It’s the users who must use their own judgment. In this, the stone age of online social tools, you simply don’t have the control tools in place. You can ‘blue-sky’ about it all you want, but right now if you don’t want your data shared, mined, or otherwise used by third parties, then simply don’t post, share or publish it. Anywhere. As long as you are handing data to third-parties, if you’re not happy about it, your only choice is to vote with your feet. And if all the players are ‘bad citizens’ then tough luck. We’ll have to build our own trusted system.

    Where the hell was Doc on this call ?? If ever there was a time for the voice of reason, this was it. ;)

    ps. MA’s concept about someone’s business card coming to me with some sort of implicit contract is utter paranoid bullshit. It’s up to him to decide who he hands it out to.

  • http://www.paulopics.com Paulo Jordao

    You guys should know better…
    Money controls the world!!!

  • http://www.paulopics.com/ Paulo Jordao

    You guys should know better…
    Money controls the world!!!

  • Pingback: links for 2008-05-17 | Yostivanich.com

  • Baldo Faieta

    “2. Your friends’ info (IE, their email addresses, their birthdays, their relationship status, their political leanings, their gender, their favorite music and activities, and other stuff you’ll find on, say, Facebook’s profile).”

    I think you should be able to take your friend’s info that you have access in Facebook, *provided* that is for your eyes only. However, in another system, what guarantees are there for your friend that this is the case.

  • Baldo Faieta

    “2. Your friends’ info (IE, their email addresses, their birthdays, their relationship status, their political leanings, their gender, their favorite music and activities, and other stuff you’ll find on, say, Facebook’s profile).”

    I think you should be able to take your friend’s info that you have access in Facebook, *provided* that is for your eyes only. However, in another system, what guarantees are there for your friend that this is the case.

  • http://coolg33k2.blogspot.com/ Mido

    One of the biggest problems for me as a user is having a comprehensive address book . No one has really solved this problem for me yet. I have friends that I for instance mainly communicate over Facebook with (although I have their email address) and some that I just email with. When I want to write my Facebook friends an email I have to go into my account find their email address and paste it into my email client. Wouldn’t it be great to have all your friends email addresses and other relevant information on one page (that ideally allows you to email them from there). I think yes.

    So my short answer is yes to Scooble: 1 and 2 should be accessible through social data aggregation.

  • http://coolg33k2.blogspot.com Mido

    One of the biggest problems for me as a user is having a comprehensive address book . No one has really solved this problem for me yet. I have friends that I for instance mainly communicate over Facebook with (although I have their email address) and some that I just email with. When I want to write my Facebook friends an email I have to go into my account find their email address and paste it into my email client. Wouldn’t it be great to have all your friends email addresses and other relevant information on one page (that ideally allows you to email them from there). I think yes.

    So my short answer is yes to Scooble: 1 and 2 should be accessible through social data aggregation.

  • Eyal

    I’m totally with you on the contact info. If someone thinks that Facebook is a good contact manager he should think again. Rich people would let their assistant copy all that info into their outlook/phone. Other will do it themselves, partially – and all of them would run into issues with unsynchronized information! If facebook had a plug-in to outlook and any phone on the planet – then it might made sense, but as long as this information is managed (and was managed for ages) offline, the call to keep it only in facebook is simply ignoring reality.

    So many times I had to log in to facebook to look up someone’s new email address or phone number – and each time i manually copied that piece of information to my outlook (so it would be synched to my iphone) so i won’t have to go through this inefficient & long process next time i wanna call him. automating it is simply trivial.

  • Eyal

    I’m totally with you on the contact info. If someone thinks that Facebook is a good contact manager he should think again. Rich people would let their assistant copy all that info into their outlook/phone. Other will do it themselves, partially – and all of them would run into issues with unsynchronized information! If facebook had a plug-in to outlook and any phone on the planet – then it might made sense, but as long as this information is managed (and was managed for ages) offline, the call to keep it only in facebook is simply ignoring reality.

    So many times I had to log in to facebook to look up someone’s new email address or phone number – and each time i manually copied that piece of information to my outlook (so it would be synched to my iphone) so i won’t have to go through this inefficient & long process next time i wanna call him. automating it is simply trivial.

  • http://1webservices.co.uk/ M1ke

    I think on that second issue I agree with Arrington – just because my email is there for my friends to look at doesn’t mean I want them plastering it anywhere they please, definitely not getting me sent mail from other companies as a result.

    Then again, this isn’t an issue that’s started with Facebook – for years most sites have had options to scan your address book and send invites to all your contacts, even though the address book is even more private than your information in a social network.

    The real issue here is one of identity, and connecting your identities to those of people you know – and then attaching certain usage rights to those connections. A differential is needed – I may be friends with people from my forums on Facebook, but I don’t want them seeing some photos of me and my family. That’s my choice and I shouldn’t have it taken away from me just because I use Facebook as a means of contacting people.

  • http://blog.1log.co.uk/ M1ke

    I think on that second issue I agree with Arrington – just because my email is there for my friends to look at doesn’t mean I want them plastering it anywhere they please, definitely not getting me sent mail from other companies as a result.

    Then again, this isn’t an issue that’s started with Facebook – for years most sites have had options to scan your address book and send invites to all your contacts, even though the address book is even more private than your information in a social network.

    The real issue here is one of identity, and connecting your identities to those of people you know – and then attaching certain usage rights to those connections. A differential is needed – I may be friends with people from my forums on Facebook, but I don’t want them seeing some photos of me and my family. That’s my choice and I shouldn’t have it taken away from me just because I use Facebook as a means of contacting people.

  • http://bokardo.com/ Joshua Porter

    Here’s a question: why aren’t we having this argument about Flickr, YouTube, Del.icio.us, etc?

    Why are the sites holding objects for us not in the discussion? Well, those sites know their role, providing a tool for us to input our data for our own use. They provide services so that we can connect to others, but I’m in much more control of the data I put there.

    Social networks, on the other hand, somehow think they can control that data…while using spin to make it seem like we are in control.

  • http://bokardo.com Joshua Porter

    Here’s a question: why aren’t we having this argument about Flickr, YouTube, Del.icio.us, etc?

    Why are the sites holding objects for us not in the discussion? Well, those sites know their role, providing a tool for us to input our data for our own use. They provide services so that we can connect to others, but I’m in much more control of the data I put there.

    Social networks, on the other hand, somehow think they can control that data…while using spin to make it seem like we are in control.

  • http://www.benshouse.net/ Ben

    On the second issue, if I’ve given you my business card, email, whatever, then I’ve given it to *you alone*. I trust that if you pass that information on, it will only be to those that I might actually wish to communicate with. Otherwise I’ll be using rscoble@fastcompany.com any time I need an email address for spam…

  • http://www.benshouse.net Ben

    On the second issue, if I’ve given you my business card, email, whatever, then I’ve given it to *you alone*. I trust that if you pass that information on, it will only be to those that I might actually wish to communicate with. Otherwise I’ll be using rscoble@fastcompany.com any time I need an email address for spam…

  • http://techleaders20.blogspot.com/ Alex Hammer

    The larger issue is that Mike Arrington (can be) (an effective) bully, including to his own people (Robert a member of TechCrunch hosted Gillmor Gang)

    Link (including Arrington attack on Scoble):
    http://techleaders20.blogspot.com/2008/01/michael-arrington-talking-too-tough-at.html

    Robert is too much of a nice guy to fight fire with fire, and is trying to find other tactics with Arrington, it appears, to get his points across.

  • http://techleaders20.blogspot.com Alex Hammer

    The larger issue is that Mike Arrington (can be) (an effective) bully, including to his own people (Robert a member of TechCrunch hosted Gillmor Gang)

    Link (including Arrington attack on Scoble):
    http://techleaders20.blogspot.com/2008/01/michael-arrington-talking-too-tough-at.html

    Robert is too much of a nice guy to fight fire with fire, and is trying to find other tactics with Arrington, it appears, to get his points across.

  • Pingback: things I read yesterday … 05/17/2008 « The Bankwatch

  • http://www.piedcow.com/blog mal

    Just the fact that Facebook hasn’t joined OpenSocial (to my knowledge) says it all. I mean if the world unites around a standard, I won’t mind typing in my contact info all over again and leaving Facebook behind forever.

  • http://www.piedcow.com/blog mal

    Just the fact that Facebook hasn’t joined OpenSocial (to my knowledge) says it all. I mean if the world unites around a standard, I won’t mind typing in my contact info all over again and leaving Facebook behind forever.

  • Crawford

    That musta been one hell of a cleansing shower.
    What kind of soap do you use?

  • Crawford

    That musta been one hell of a cleansing shower.
    What kind of soap do you use?

  • http://scobleizer.com/ Robert Scoble

    Ben: if you hand me a business card a couple of things:

    1. If it’s me personally I don’t hand those over to other people. TO ME a relationship with you is more important than anything else and if I do anything to ruin that relationship I have with you that’ll just bring a pox on my business.

    BUT:

    2. When you hand your business card out you lose all control of what happens with that email address. Sorry, but Arrington and you are totally wrong on this one. You don’t have the right to tell me “you can use Outlook but not Gmail.” And, yes, you ARE taking a risk that I’ll sell your email address to a spammer or do something else that you’d find nasty. I’ve had people take my email into a public discussion list, which spread my email address beyond people I might care to give my email to. There’s also no way for you to control that.

    Which is the reason I put my email up on my public blog. I figure that way I don’t have to worry about these issues since everyone will have access to my email address and I’ll just build systems to separate the good messages from the bad, which isn’t hard to do.

← Older Comments
Newer Comments →