That's My Data, Bro.
Posted by Petrice Gaskin at May. 16, 2008
Michael Arrington wrote a fantastic post at TechCrunch about Data Portability. He discusses Facebook's recent decision to nix it's deal with Google and rescind it's decision to give Friend Connect access to Facebook's API.
Arrington argues that despite Facebook's claims that it changed its mind because of privacy concerns, its real motivation for reneging on the deal is Facebook realized that doing so would undermine its strength in the social network market by allowing Google to position itself as "the most important social network without actually having a social network." By acting as a "platform provider with tools that power social networks" Google could come to dominate social networks. Going along with the deal would have also undercut Facebook Connect--which mirrors Friend Connect.
He points out that Facebook, Myspace, and Google are all so hungry to launch products that provide data portability, because it obviously endears itself to being a means of expanding and strengthening each company's presence in the market, and pulling in more profit. But, the idea of entrusting our personal information to the wavering consciousness of for-profit companies (who have hungry boards to appease) is just as bad as it sounds. Data portability mechanisms should be non-for-profit like OpenId.
Facebook, Myspace, and Google won't really provide users with data portability, merely a truncated version of it that suits each company's objective.
Arrington argues that despite Facebook's claims that it changed its mind because of privacy concerns, its real motivation for reneging on the deal is Facebook realized that doing so would undermine its strength in the social network market by allowing Google to position itself as "the most important social network without actually having a social network." By acting as a "platform provider with tools that power social networks" Google could come to dominate social networks. Going along with the deal would have also undercut Facebook Connect--which mirrors Friend Connect.
He points out that Facebook, Myspace, and Google are all so hungry to launch products that provide data portability, because it obviously endears itself to being a means of expanding and strengthening each company's presence in the market, and pulling in more profit. But, the idea of entrusting our personal information to the wavering consciousness of for-profit companies (who have hungry boards to appease) is just as bad as it sounds. Data portability mechanisms should be non-for-profit like OpenId.
Facebook, Myspace, and Google won't really provide users with data portability, merely a truncated version of it that suits each company's objective.