Thomas Legg's Geek Blog

So Steve Gillmor over at Tech Crunch has an interesting thought on the Facebook/Google spat over data access via an API.

Mac users of Facebook have already faced this issue with the slap at the developer of FacebookAB Sync.

# Please stop emailing me about FacebookSync (6/12/2007)
I have not sent anyone a copy of FacebookSync who has emailed me and asked, nor will I in the future. If you wish to obtain a copy of FacebookSync, please do so elsewhere and make a Facebook group or blog post about where it is or something. If it bothers you that I have agreed not to distribute FacebookSync, please contact Facebook directly and complain about their Terms of Use.

# FacebookSync violates Facebook Terms of Use (6/7/2007)
Facebook contacted me and requested that I stop distribution of FacebookSync since it is in violation of Facebook's Terms of Use. Sorry to all out there who will miss this useful application.

The developer has since released a newer crippled version of the product to comply with Facebook's legal threats. What's been removed to comply? The product no longer imports data from Facebook to create new AddressBook entries. This isn't taking your user data from Facebook and running off to create a new Social Network structure, it's just programatically exporting the data from your Facebook friends and syncing that data with your user account's Address Book. And the powers that be at Facebook sensed that to be a threat, and this was almost a year ago and nothing has changed in their mentality since then.

Suggests to me that Facebook's powers that be will pursue the same against the web social aggregating services mentioned by Erick Schonfeld.

ESPN's devblog's thoughts on this post point to a BBC article on the gaping holes for personal information leaking via Facebook apps. Should I mention I'm not a big facebook app user?

And despite the Facebook developer's blog statements to the contrary, it's more and more common to find users not trusting Facebook with their data as pseudonyms (cleverly disguised to pass Facebook's registration filters) become more prevalent there.

In the end the existing model for monetising "web 2.0" social networks is based upon building the largest silo as an advertising delivery platform. And perhaps it's just me, but the whole model of how individuals build their networks inside the silos seems very artificial and crude and in need of a conceptual re-think which gets away from the advertising delivery platform and gets people socialising. But that's a post for another time.