Facebook redux
J.A. Terranson
measl at mfn.org
Mon May 3 05:01:33 PDT 2010
http://www.infoworld.com/print/121701
Facebook wants to control the Web, like it or not
By Robert X. Cringely
Created 2010-04-23 11:08AM
Mark Zuckerberg may look and sound like the irritatingly self-satisfied
rich kid you always hated in high school, but I.ll say this for him: He.s
got cojones the size of tractor tires.
Facebook just made a play to take over the entire Web -- or at least, the
parts that get the most traffic -- via its new "social graph [1],.
officially unveiled at this week.s F8 confab.
[ Want to cash in on your IT experiences? InfoWorld is looking for stories
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Some of the changes are cosmetic. Instead of declaring yourself .a fan.
of, say, Red Bull or the Talking Heads or "I don.t care how comfortable
Crocs are, you look like a dumbass [3]" on Facebook, you now simply Like
them. The bigger change is that Facebook has now dismantled its garden
walls and extended Like across the Web. Now you can express your Likes
across a wide range of sites and have that information auto-magically
transferred to your Facebook page, as well as the pages of everyone on
your friends list.
You can also see who else on your Facebook list shares your deep abiding
affection for the Bay City Rollers or Hello Kitty boxer shorts -- on the
page itself.
In addition, Facebook has decided to generously share your personal
information with .select. business partners. Right now that includes just
three: Pandora, Yelp, and Microsoft.s Docs.com. This is what Facebook is
calling "instant personalization [4]" -- grabbing information from your
public Facebook page and using it to "improve" your experience on other
sites.
If you.re not expecting this, it can be a bit jarring, as IT World.s Thank
You for Not Sharing blogger Dan Tynan [5] explains:
I couldn't sleep this morning, so I schlepped down to the nearest Wifi
cafe. plugged in my noise-canceling ear phones and dialed up Pandora.
Before I'd even logged in, the site launched into one of my favorite Tom
Waits songs, "Jockey Full of Bourbon," followed by songs from John Lee
Hooker and Tift Merritt [6]. Bang bang bang, three of my top artists, just
like that.
Coincidence? Nope. Pandora pulled my musical preferences from my
public Facebook profile. I didn't ask it to. It just did. It was both cool
and just the tiniest bit creepy.
This must be what Facebook was talking about when it unveiled proposed
changes to its privacy policy [7] last month. To wit:
In the proposed privacy policy, we've also explained the possibility
of working with some partner websites that we pre-approve to offer a more
personalized experience at the moment you visit the site. In such
instances, we would only introduce this feature with a small, select group
of partners and we would also offer new controls.
At the time, they were just .discussing. implementing these changes. Guess
we.re done talking about it.
As usual with Facebook, you.re already entered into their nefarious scheme
by default, though you can opt out. But it.s not exactly a cakewalk. PC
World.s JR Raphael details the multistep tango [8] for turning off
auto-sharing and disentangling your data from third-party sites.
Zuckerberg talks about the convenience of the Social Graph, and he.s right
-- it is more convenient when Pandora knows more about my musical
preferences. (Of course, considering a premium Pandora account costs $36 a
year, it should already know plenty.) It.s more convenient to simply click
a button on a site I.ve just discovered and populate yet another Web
profile with information I.ve already entered into Facebook. It.s more
convenient to see which friends share my perverse interests without having
to scroll through their Facebook profiles.
But the social graph isn.t about convenience -- it.s about control.
Facebook wants to own single-sign-on and authentication, just as Apple
wants to own what apps you can install on your Wonder Tablet [9], and
Amazon wants to control how you manage e-books on your Kindle [10] -- only
Facebooks wants to do it across the entire Web.
Factory City blogger Chris Messina [11] writes:
When all likes lead to Facebook, and liking requires a Facebook
account, and Facebook gets to hoard all of the metadata and likes around
the interactions between people and content, it depletes the ecosystem of
potential and chaos . those attributes which make the technology industry
so interesting and competitive. . it.s dishonest to think that the
Facebook Open Graph Protocol benefits anyone more than Facebook . as it
exists in its current incarnation, with Facebook accounts as the only
valid participants.
As I and others have said before, your identity is too important to be
owned by any one company.
Similarly, Facebook isn.t collecting and cataloging your consumer
preferences out of the good of its heart. Clearly it.s planning to deliver
targeted advertising based on my Likes; before long, my browser will be
chock-full of ads for Bay City Roller reunion tours and Hello Kitty
undergarments. The question is, what else will this information be used
for, and by whom? Even if today Facebook aggregates and anonymizes this
information, there.s no guarantee they won.t change their minds tomorrow
and build nifty little profiles of all Facebook users, down to their
favorite breakfast cereals and the deodorant they use.
Each of the 2,583 changes the site has made to its privacy policies since
Zucky stole the idea for was divinely inspired to create Facebook has had
the net effect of removing more privacy for its users. He.s already
declared that sharing trumps privacy [12]. There.s no reason to expect any
of that to change -- Like it or not.
Do you .like. Facebook.s new social sharing scheme? Spout off in the
comments below or email me: cringe at infoworld.com [13].
This story, "Facebook wants to control the Web, Like it or not [14]," was
originally published at InfoWorld.com [15]. Read more of Robert X.
Cringely's Notes from the Field blog [16].
* Adventures in IT
* Facebook
* Internet
* Social networking
Source URL (retrieved on 2010-05-03 05:00AM):
http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/facebook-wants-control-the-web-it-or-not-701
Links:
[1]
http://www.pcworld.com/article/194783/facebook_to_share_user_preferences_with_other_social_network_sites.html
[2] mailto:offtherecord at infoworld.com
[3]
http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-Dont-care-How-Comfortable-Crocs-Are-You-Look-Like-A-Dumbass/88367110762#!/pages/I-Dont-care-How-Comfortable-Crocs-Are-You-Look-Like-A-Dumbass/88367110762?v=wall
[4] http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=1068
[5]
http://www.itworld.com/internet/105438/whats-about-facebooks-like-button?source=peer2peerpromo
[6] http://tiftmerritt.com/
[7] http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=376904492130
[8] http://www.pcworld.com/article/194821/
[9] http://www.esarcasm.com/10845/apple-ipad/
[10]
http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/amazon-makes-amends-kindle-blunder-point-578
[11]
http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2010/04/22/understanding-the-open-graph-protocol/
[12] http://www.esarcasm.com/10237/facebooks-mark-zuckerberg-bares-all/
[13] mailto:cringe at infoworld.com
[14]
http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/facebook-wants-control-the-web-it-or-not-701?source=footer
[15] http://www.infoworld.com/?source=footer
[16] http://www.infoworld.com/blogs/robert-x-cringely?source=footer
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