

Larry Page Calls Out Facebook For Lack Of Social Data Portability - tcfast
http://tcfast.com/2011/07/16/zing-larry-page-calls-out-competitors-aka-facebook-for-lack-of-social-data-portability/

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kmavm
Here's what Google had to say about the _exact same product decision_ in their
social network Orkut in 2009:

"Mass exportation of email is not standard on most social networks — when a
user friends someone they don’t then expect that person to be easily able to
send that contact information to a third party along with hundreds of other
addresses with just one click."

[http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/26/orkut-slows-hemorraging-
to-...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/26/orkut-slows-hemorraging-to-facebook-
by-making-friend-export-tool-nearly-useless/)

Google was right then, and Facebook is right now. You have a right to download
the data _you_ put into Facebook, but not the data _your friends_ put into
Facebook: their photos, status updates, check-ins, and yes, contact
information, are all technically readable to you, but this is information your
friends have contributed, not you. Providing bulk download of other people's
data would be widely abused, and lead some of the same critics of Facebook's
"lack of openness" in this decision to complain about Facebook's "disregard
for privacy" if it were reversed.

I work for, but don't speak for Facebook, just my opinion, etc.

~~~
Daniel14
From the same quote: "Google Contacts syncs with Orkut, so users can export
their Orkut friends’ email addresses from Google Contacts", so it's
technically wrong that Google didn't let you export your friend's mail
addresses anymore. They just made it more difficult, ie didn't bundle it with
the Orkut csv file people used to import everything into facebook.

And I think that's actually Google's point: They feel Facebook should offer
reciprocity; if people can switch from Google to fb easily, fb should be
willing to provide the same feature to their users.

Personally, I also don't agree with your point: I doubt the option to export
your friends' email addresses in a useful file format would get abused, as
it's only your friends that have access to it. You willingly added them, and
thus gave them access to your email address. If you voluntarily tell a friend
your email address, shouldn't he be able to remember it regardless of what
social network he currently uses?

~~~
kmavm
> it's only your friends that have access to it.

...and whatever apps your friends have authorized.

~~~
ja2ke
Why would a clean, user focused "export my info" tool also be exposed to apps?
I can't imagine a situation where those two features would be intrinsically
tied. This is about an end-user-side button which dumps your friend network
'address book' into a simple machine readable format and downloads it to the
users local drive. Implying such a feature would/could,
accidentally/maliciously cause a user's contacts to flood out uncontrollably
to 3rd party app developers reads like FUD.

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nhaehnle
One way to look at the current situation in social networks is that it is a
rehash of the pre-Internet situation. Pre-Internet, some institutions already
had internal networks with mail systems and so forth, but each network was an
isolated island. The internet enabled people in different networks to talk
with each other.

The social networks of today are isolated islands, and I would love to see a
"social internet", in the sense of a suite of protocols that allows different
social networks to be directly connected. I am thinking in the direction of
Jabber for instant messaging and OpenID for authentication, i.e. some set of
protocols that is truly aligned with the distributed philosophy of the
original internet.

Unfortunately, the structure of financial rewards is not aligned with such a
goal. I do hope that Google+ gets just enough momentum to force Facebook into
cooperating on that front.

~~~
thristian
The OStatus[1] specification enables distributed operation of Twitter-like
interactions (specifically, short status messages, @replies and direct
messages), so there's that. The people who worked on that are working on a new
revision[2] that presumably will try to address the use-cases of sites like
Google+.

[1]: <http://ostatus.org/about>

[2]:
[https://plus.google.com/104323674441008487802/posts/it3iBLUj...](https://plus.google.com/104323674441008487802/posts/it3iBLUja4n)

~~~
pgroves
For any new technology (here, the example is social media), there is a natural
evolution from closed to open standards. Early on, lots of proprietary code is
modified as quickly as possible to see what works well in practice. Some
companies win, some lose. An industry group trying to decide what to put in a
standard is pointless b/c it's all hypothetical what features will survive the
test of time.

Eventually, however, an open standards organization should come in and say
"these are the standard features, let's encapsulate them in an open standard
that everyone uses." This has been proven to be a very healthy way to get to
an open standard that really works well in practice.

In 2011, I believe social media is ready to move to an open standard. The last
five to ten years has seen a lot of technology built and verified by trial and
error. There certainly has been enough capital investment in social media
systems. The basics of what Facebook and Twitter do are a very good start.
Something like OStatus can define the basics of what social media is by
looking at what really works, which would not have been possible even a few
years ago.

This is why I'm disappointed in google+. The social media industry is at the
point in it's life cycle that it can move to an open standard. Google was in a
unique position to ram it through all at once. Instead, they decided to make
yet another closed system with minor improvements over the existing
competitors. They may win lots of users in the short term but a bigger shift
to open standards is coming, but now we have to wait longer for it.

~~~
thristian
I too wish G+ were federated (or at least federable), and it's kind of sad
that it's not... on the other hand, I've seen a number of Google employees
making the right noises[1] about APIs and distributed operation, and reaching
out to other social networks, so I'm still positive.

[1]: See this thread:
[https://plus.google.com/104323674441008487802/posts/1EzrmG9K...](https://plus.google.com/104323674441008487802/posts/1EzrmG9KjUZ)

------
flocial
In other news Mark Zuckerberg calls out Google for lack of search engine
transparency.

Honestly, I think the lack of social graph portability on Facebook is a really
good thing. Look how they messed up the Wall with these so-called social
games. The day Zynga gets my social graph is the day I leave.

Google's posturing is really getting old. Maybe I'd take them more seriously
if they didn't have their finger in every pie.

~~~
ekidd
_The day Zynga gets my social graph is the day I leave._

I strongly prefer to keep my social graph private, and reveal it only to
people who are in it. However, Facebook declared social graphs public quite a
while back:

 _"Now when you uncheck the 'Show my friends on my profile' option in the
Friends box on your profile, your Friend List won't appear on your profile
regardless of whether people are viewing it while logged into Facebook or
logged out. This information is still publicly available, however, and can be
accessed by applications."_
[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10413835-36.html#ixzz1SMg1...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10413835-36.html#ixzz1SMg1bJcn)

So as I understood it, Zynga already has access to my social graph. But I'm
not a Facebook privacy expert; I find the privacy rules confusing.

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spullara
I'm very surprised that when you use Google Takeout it doesn't give you all
the data that has been made available to you. For example, it doesn't export
email addresses or phone numbers for people in your circles that you didn't
explicitly put in your address book. Basically the same as Facebook's position
on data export.

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pgroves
I want interoperability of social networks, not portability.

Being able to share info across social media services would change the way
social networks are used in a significant way for every user, every day.

Portability is a backup plan you hope to never use.

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thurn
Google+ doesn't export contact data either! It only produces contact
information for people already in your Google address book. How has Google
earned this "Holier than thou" attitude?

~~~
justinschuh
Google+ doesn't export email addresses that you don't already have access to--
for example, if someone has you in a circle but you've never exchanged an
email. That makes sense, because the export shouldn't violate the privacy
restrictions enforced by the normal UI.

However, in you can't export an email address already connected to a profile
(either through contacts import or because the user shares it via privacy
settings). So, the point is that Facebook is impeding export in a way that
does nothing to improve a user's privacy but does create obstacles to moving
your information elsewhere.

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c1sc0
We're only two weeks in and competition already turns out to be a good thing.
I'm really hoping that Google releases an API soon because that's where I want
to see changes: third-party social app development is quickly turning into a
monoculture & we all know how bad that is.

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timxpp
...says the company that keeps their search engine ranking algorithms secret.

...says the company that does not even share how much % of their adsense
revenue goes to advertisers.

In short: Both companies guard what they consider important for their success.

~~~
ForrestN
What does their lack of transparency have to do with portability? Google is
accusing facebook of holding users' data hostage. Both facebook and Google
keep lots of aspects of their business private for competitive advantage.
Locking users in and intentionally making it as difficult as possible for them
to try competitors is a crappy thing for facebook to do, and Google scores a
legitimate advantage by doing the opposite.

