DISQUS

Tony · 1 year ago

A business model that has a foundation on locking up user data to keep switching costs high seems like a recipe for long-term disaster. We've seen several times that "open-ness" of data or knowledge generally trumps locked-down-sown-up0tight-"mine mine mine"- perspectives on data.

Facebook (and others) need to figure out how to keep users, make a dollar or two and still share user data. The overall benefit to the community at large (and to Facebook) will be larger than if they just horde data.

Jay Cuthrell · 1 year ago

Facebook just sent email about f8 via their "Mail" platform and it didn't even render the HTML correctly. So. Much. Irony.

Chris Sacca · 1 year ago

My comment was intended as a prod between pals. I make it a habit to tease Dave and other friends at FB about the relatively closed nature of some of their platform. I was by no means attempting to jump into the fray regarding OpenSocial/FriendConnect.

That said, as a FB user, while I was thrilled to see them start passing full text emails to me, it does bum me out that I can't reply back to the thread from my regular email inbox. It is an annoyance, and Dave has heard this from me before. This seemed like a fun opportunity to remind him of my #1 feature request.

More importantly, for the record, I am particularly impressed by Dave Morin when I see him participate candidly in public discussions regarding issues like these despite his high profile. Having been in a big company and knowing the effort that it takes to manage internal PR in parallel with community expectations, my hat goes off to him. It is very clear that Dave cares deeply about users and works hard to make them happy. I hope his team at FB continues to encourage and enable him to be accessible and transparent to users.

If you have any feedback, be sure to send it to me on FB and I will answer it there. ;)

MG Siegler · 1 year ago

Yes Chris, I took your emoticon wink in your comment to mean it wasn't entirely serious. But as you note, there are definitely some issues. I thought it was an interesting starting point for an important, albeit old, discussion for the holiday weekend :)

Blake Ross · 1 year ago

MG,

Have you ever looked into the Facebook API launched in 2006?

http://developers.facebook.com/documentation.ph...

Once a user authenticates via Facebook, a third-party developer may access their information via users.getInfo. There are also events, groups, photos and pages APIs.

Via the photos API, developers may retrieve create or retrieve albums, tag photos or retrieve tags, and upload photos. Is there other functionality we should add?

Blake

MG Siegler · 1 year ago

Blake - It's my understanding that you can get data such as photos, but you cannot publish it, right? Isn't this why we don't see Facebook photos on FriendFeed for example?

Michael Grimm · 1 year ago

I feel OK with Facebook keeping my photos locked up. They are for my friends, not the whole world. If I want to make a public photo gallery I will go elsewhere and that's fine with me.

Ian McAllister · 1 year ago

Tony, can you list your examples of the times "open-ness of data or knowledge generally trumps locked-down-sown-up0tight-"mine mine mine"- perspectives on data."? It would be good to have a discussion of those specific cases.

Ultimately, if you want walled gardens to open up you need to make a business case based on hard data and meaningful examples.

davemc500hats · 1 year ago

hey MG, I think Lexis should make cars free for me too... think you can put in the good wire for me?

;)

(no, sorry, users don't get to decide by business model)

MG Siegler · 1 year ago

I can try to make that happen Dave :) But really, I'm fine with private companies doing what it takes to make money, I just want them to be clear about it.

Michael F. Martin · 1 year ago

Morin's idea is a good one, and way more important than an industry squabble over APIs.

Rather than showing other social networking startups how it's done by opening Facebook's API to other UIs, Facebook (or a social network like it) should be working with government to make information more available.

The organizations affiliated with Larry Lessig's Change Congress campaign are already doing just that. But we should also have Change Administrative Agencies, Change State Government, Change Local Government, etc.

I actually really like what Granicus is doing in this regard.

Jeffrey · 1 year ago

It's less about who owns the data and more about the relative risk of providing read-only versus read-write APIs. Sacca is being extremely disingenuous here.

Current Googler · 1 year ago

Chris Sacca, formerly "head of special initiatives" at Google = Chris "I was just a senior manager at Google but was ashamed of my junior league title so I created my own" Sacca