Reactions to story from Furrier.org - Business & Technology Blog

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  • Author unknown

    Facebook Blocking Google's Friend Connect For Privacy Issues

    http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2008/05/16/facebook-block...
    143 days ago in WebProNews | eBusiness News, Search News, and Business Videos · Authority: 1,500

    My ex-boss, John Furrier, goes after Facebook after Facebook blocked Google’s Friend Connect from using its API to inport friends from Facebook into Google’s Friend Connect. read more

  • Author unknown

    Facebook Blocking Google's Friend Connect For Privacy Issues

    http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2008/05/16/facebook-block...
    143 days ago in Google | WebProNews · No authority yet

    My ex-boss, John Furrier, goes after Facebook after Facebook blocked Google’s Friend Connect from using its API to inport friends from Facebook into Google’s Friend Connect. read more

  • Author unknown

    Facebook Blocking Google's Friend Connect For Privacy Issues

    http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2008/05/16/facebook-block...
    143 days ago in Blog Talk Archive | WebProNews · Authority: 197

    Facebook Blocking Google's Friend Connect For Privacy Issues By Robert Scoble - Fri, 05/16/2008 - 12:08pm. My ex-boss, John Furrier, goes after Facebook after Facebook blocked Google’s Friend Connect from using its API to inport friends from Facebook into Google’s Friend Connect. News Tags: Google, Friend Connect, facebook, Minggl

  • Author unknown

    http://scobleizer.com/2008/05/15/facebook-has-a-point-where-it-comes-to-your-privacy/

    http://paniaguai.tumblr.com/post/35013128
    144 days ago in paniaguai · Authority: 4

    http://scobleizer.com/2008/05/15/facebook-has-a-point-where-it-comes-to-your-privacy/ Facebook has a point where it comes to your privacy My ex-boss, John Furrier, goes after Facebook after Facebook blocked Google’s Friend Connect from using its API to inport friends from Facebook into Google’s Friend Connect. I saw Dave Morin, who runs Facebook’s developer platform, at Google’s event Monday night. You can see him at the end of the event where I shoved my cell phone in his face and tried to get him to comment. He refused. After the camera is off he said it was “interesting” that Google had used Facebook as one of the examples during its launch of Friend Connect. I guess it was a lot more than “interesting.” They blocked Google because they didn’t want Google to populate its friend network with data collected from Facebook. Oh, I know, that’s not the real reason they told TechCrunch and others. Here’s the official statement from Facebook. Facebook is being consistent here. Dave Morin told me a few months ago all about Facebook’s concerns. Such as, what happens if you change your email address, will it change everywhere that your email address got copied to? Clearly with Google’s Friend Connect the answer is “no.” Why? Because it was a one-time action and there was no live connection back to Facebook and Google’s Friend Connect’s data would get older and older (and more and more out of date). Want to delete your email address off of the Web? Sorry, thanks to other systems Facebook can’t ensure that’ll happen. Now, I’ve been on both sides of this story. A few months ago I tried using some unreleased technology from Plaxo to do exactly what Google did on Monday night. I not only got kicked off of the API (which is what should have happened) but my account was hidden and I was locked out for about 20 hours. Facebook’s “penalty” for that behavior was way too harsh. And, some, like John Furrier, believe that Facebook is on the wrong side of the line tonight again. Me? I think Facebook has a point, but I think the horse is out of the barn already and Facebook won’t be able to shove it back in. Why? You should check into Minggl. It’s a toolbar that does far more than what Google’s Friend Connect does. But it does it in a way that Facebook will never be able to block. Why? Because it’s your browser that scrapes all your friend’s info into Minggl’s browser bar. That bar then uploads all that information back up to Minggl. There’s no way that Facebook will be able to block Minggl. If Google wants to push the issue they should do exactly what Minggl is doing. To get geeky for a moment, Minngl is collecting that data with a separate IP address each time the same one your browser is using. If Facebook wants to block Minngl it’ll have to block you from browsing to Facebook. Facebook can’t do that to everyone, so Minggl has picked an architecture that makes it impossible for Facebook to block. At least using technical methods. I wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook tried to sue Minggl or other companies that use similar methods to collect data. Privacy is dead. Anyone who puts anything on a computer screen that they want hidden from public view should think again. I don’t think it can be stopped and the walled gardens that have built around Facebook and other social networks are temporarily walled at best. That data WILL leak out of the walls and already is. Facebook’s attempt to keep the walls up will prove unsuccessful. Just ask former KGO Radio Talk Show host Bernie Ward. He was convicted of sending child pornography through email to someone else. If email isn’t a private medium then surely Facebook isn’t. (The person he was emailing those photos to emailed them to the authorities). What do you think? Does Facebook have a point or is the horse already out of the barn? UPDATE: This is being discussed at a much faster rate over on FriendFeed than over here. UPDATE2: Google employee Kevin Marks says I’m wrong in comments here. Here’s his correction to this post: “Robert, you’re wrong about Friend Connect data getting stale. It’s fetched directly from your linked Friend Data sources, including other Social Networks, with short-term caching on Friend Connect servers. There is a live two-way connection - Friend Connect posts back events to the Social Networks’ activity streams when the user choses to do so.” UPDATE3: Mike Arrington over on TechCrunch thinks I’m wrong on this post. But, if you read the comments over on his blog you’ll see we’re not that far apart. Tags: Facebook, Google, Google Friend Connect, privacy Filed under: technology @ 8:18 

  • Photo of yuga

    Icahn vs. Yahoo, Facebook vs. Google

    http://www.yugatech.com/blog/gooooogle/icahn-vs-yahoo-facebo...
    144 days ago in YugaTech - Philippines, Technology News and Reviews · Authority: 326

    Carl Icahn, an erstwhile Yahoo shareholder wants to fire the entire Yahoo Board. In his letter to Yahoo, he claims buying $2.5 billion worth of Yahoo stocks to push his agenda. On the other hand, Facebook is accusing Google for invading user privacy with its Friend Connect. In his May 15 letter, Carl Icahn basically tells the entire board that he’s firing them and names his own replacement which includes Dallas Mavericks owner and popular blogger Mark Cuban. He also threatened them of law suits if ever Yahoo makes any more deals with Google or AOL that might disparage further Microsoft negotiations. He claims that Yahoo did not took the shareholder’s interest when it ignored the $33 final offer by Microsoft. At that time, the offer was a 71% premium to the market value of Yahoo the day before the first offer was made public. Yahoo responds to Icahn and says a proxy fight for the board seat is not necessary as the current slate of independent members are still open to negotiations with Microsoft. Yahoo will hold its annual shareholder meeting this July (with a possible election of new board members) and that’s the time we’ll find out if the proxy fight goes thru. Boom Town has a funny translation of Icahn letter. Meanwhile, the brewing battle between Facebook and Google is still up over the openness of social profiles. Google announced Friend Connect last May 12, a service that helps website owners grow traffic by enabling any site on the web to easily provide social features for its visitors. However, Facebook later blocked Google Friend Connect from accessing its Open API: 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. Open is not actually open after all at Facebook. Furrier thinks Facebook has just pulled a Netscape. Robert Scoble disagrees. It’s a lesson we need to learn — an open door policy can be good for your strategy but it can also make other enterprising entities benefit from your hard work. That’s might not be good, especially if the one benefiting is a potential competitor.

  • Author unknown

    Facebook doesn’t want to ‘friend’ Google

    http://www.hello.com.au/facebook/facebook-doesnt-want-to-fri...
    144 days ago in hello.com.au · Authority: 13

    Online social networking etiquette is hard enough for people. Now it seems that online social networks need an etiquette guide for interacting with each other. Search engine Google has started up a new service called Friend Connect. It basically allows smaller sites to set up their own online social networks that pull profile data like contact info and friendships from existing online networks like Facebook, MySpace, et al. Today Facebook has said it won’t allow Google to use their members data in this way. Facebook explained why on their blog…. “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.” via Facebook Developers Hardcore internet purists freak out at anything that goes against the free and open philosophies that the web was founded upon. But others have already said it was the correct thing for Facebook to do. Users don’t care about this stuff. They just want to interact with their friends on a site where all their friends are also users. I don’t really care either. Though, if I was Google I would totally write “You Suck!” on Facebook’s wall.

  • Photo of scobleizer

    Facebook has a point where it comes to your privacy

    http://scobleizer.com/2008/05/15/facebook-has-a-point-where-...
    144 days ago in Scobleizer — Tech geek blogger · Authority: 3,820

    My ex-boss, John Furrier, goes after Facebook after Facebook blocked Google’s Friend Connect from using its API to inport friends from Facebook into Google’s Friend Connect. I saw Dave Morin, who runs Facebook’s developer platform, at Google’s event Monday night. You can see him at the end of the event where I shoved my cell phone in his face and tried to get him to comment. He refused. After the camera is off he said it was “interesting” that Google had used Facebook as one of the examples during its launch of Friend Connect. I guess it was a lot more than “interesting.” They blocked Google because they didn’t want Google to populate its friend network with data collected from Facebook. Oh, I know, that’s not the real reason they told TechCrunch and others. Here’s the official statement from Facebook. Facebook is being consistent here. Dave Morin told me a few months ago all about Facebook’s concerns. Such as, what happens if you change your email address, will it change everywhere that your email address got copied to? Clearly with Google’s Friend Connect the answer is “no.” Why? Because it was a one-time action and there was no live connection back to Facebook and Google’s Friend Connect’s data would get older and older (and more and more out of date). Want to delete your email address off of the Web? Sorry, thanks to other systems Facebook can’t ensure that’ll happen. Now, I’ve been on both sides of this story. A few months ago I tried using some unreleased technology from Plaxo to do exactly what Google did on Monday night. I not only got kicked off of the API (which is what should have happened) but my account was hidden and I was locked out for about 20 hours. Facebook’s “penalty” for that behavior was way too harsh. And, some, like John Furrier, believe that Facebook is on the wrong side of the line tonight again. Me? I think Facebook has a point, but I think the horse is out of the barn already and Facebook won’t be able to shove it back in. Why? You should check into Minggl. It’s a toolbar that does far more than what Google’s Friend Connect does. But it does it in a way that Facebook will never be able to block. Why? Because it’s your browser that scrapes all your friend’s info into Minggl’s browser bar. That bar then uploads all that information back up to Minggl. There’s no way that Facebook will be able to block Minggl. If Google wants to push the issue they should do exactly what Minggl is doing. To get geeky for a moment, Minngl is collecting that data with a separate IP address each time the same one your browser is using. If Facebook wants to block Minngl it’ll have to block you from browsing to Facebook. Facebook can’t do that to everyone, so Minggl has picked an architecture that makes it impossible for Facebook to block. At least using technical methods. I wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook tried to sue Minggl or other companies that use similar methods to collect data. Privacy is dead. Anyone who puts anything on a computer screen that they want hidden from public view should think again. I don’t think it can be stopped and the walled gardens that have built around Facebook and other social networks are temporarily walled at best. That data WILL leak out of the walls and already is. Facebook’s attempt to keep the walls up will prove unsuccessful. Just ask former KGO Radio Talk Show host Bernie Ward. He was convicted of sending child pornography through email to someone else. If email isn’t a private medium then surely Facebook isn’t. (The person he was emailing those photos to emailed them to the authorities). What do you think? Does Facebook have a point or is the horse already out of the barn? UPDATE: This is being discussed at a much faster rate over on FriendFeed than over here. UPDATE2: Google employee Kevin Marks says I’m wrong in comments here. Here’s his correction to this post: “Robert, you’re wrong about Friend Connect data getting stale. It’s fetched directly from your linked Friend Data sources, including other Social Networks, with short-term caching on Friend Connect servers. There is a live two-way connection - Friend Connect posts back events to the Social Networks’ activity streams when the user choses to do so.” UPDATE3: Mike Arrington over on TechCrunch thinks I’m wrong on this post. But, if you read the comments over on his blog you’ll see we’re not that far apart.