Despite New Openness, Facebook Remains Fundamentally Closed - Page 148
It's a networked world and we should be able to have our cake and eat it too in terms of secure conversation and network effects anonymously analyzed in aggregate.
The Good News
Facebook users will now be able to send and recieve all kinds of data through other websites and applications. Think Tweetdeck both reading from and writing to Facebook. It is good news that Facebook has decided to implement the work it's been participating in with the Activity Streams working group.
This should enable Facebook messaging through different interfaces to suit different users' needs and desires. It should help cut back on user criticism about UI changes to the site - there will now be different services that serve up the data in different ways - take your pick.
Facebook told us today that every field displayed in the Facebook Newsfeed will be made available through the Activity Streams API, for example, content, username, timestamp, and source if we're talking about something pulled in from offsite. Facebook's, David Swain, told us he expects to "see a lot of innovation on top of the stream. We expect developers to filter it, remix it, and serve it up in new and interesting ways."
The Not So Good News
Unfortunately, the data that developers are able to work with is severely limited. They will simply be able to make a call for a user to Facebook and get back the friends' streams that this particular user has the permission to see. The data can't be cached for later analysis, the company isn't sure yet how far back in the archives access will be permitted (though they say the goal is to expose all the way back), and the Terms of Service will prohibit eyes outside of a user's Facebook friends from seeing the massive amounts of friend-limited data.
In other words, this is permission to build more interfaces for Facebook. That's cool, but that's not really what the world needs - more interfaces for giving Facebook love.
Facebook holds a mind-blowing amount of conversational data. The company is analyzing it extensively and it has an omniscient view of conversations across all the networks of friends and privacy restrictions. It uses that aggregate data analysis to make business decisions and to sell advertisements.
The rest of us are only allowed to give Facebook more data and to get back a sliver per user that will facilitate more user-level participation in amassing more data at Facebook.
The most common analogy used when standards are discussed is the railroads. When railroads agreed to use the same width of rail, then trains could travel from network to network and transcontinental transport became possible. Today's announcement by Facebook is something like that, and that's great. But imagine the analytic value that could be drawn from getting reports about train times and rail conditions across the line. That's the kind of data that allows for more intelligent and interesting decisions to be made. That's explicitly prohibited, in this case, by Facebook.
How is global climate change being dealt with? It's being dealt with through global sharing of data for analysis. How is science being advanced? In some of the most exciting cases, it's being advanced by public sharing of huge data stores that anyone can then analyze for patterns. What's been some of the most important data in the United States over the last few centuries? It's census data that has been made publicly available in anonymous aggregate but in a format that could be cross-referenced with geography, commercial, and other data to better understand the world we live in.
The data that Facebook controls, conversations and social connections, could be used for analysis of real-time social patterns which could lead to world-shaking new insights. Do we get access to that data? No.
Why not? We don't get that access because Facebook was built on a fundamental promise of privacy and a complex system of privacy controls. Privacy is good, it's very good. But, the census gathers and exposes personal data without violating privacy. Lots of systems do.
Facebook needs to too. The data the network controls is just too valuable to keep locked up for only the company's own analysis.
Facebook's David Swain says that privacy on Facebook is evolving and the company is interested in facilitating this kind of analysis, but that Facebook is "not hearing users clamor for interesting analysis." That's a disingenuous argument coming from a company that is famous for pushing through important technologies against the wishes of its users, much less without their request.
The era of user-published content is still catching up to millions of people, but innovation is fast moving beyond that point. In order to deal with pressing global problems and truly leverage what's possible with contemporary internet technology, we need data-centric hooks extended for developers to grab hold of and build the future. Facebook is one of the biggest stores of data that innovation could be built upon. Once that kind of openness is achieved, then we'll say that Facebook is truly opening.
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Curious about Facebook's lawsuit against power.com....and what will happen there:
http://spamnotes.com/2009/01/22/facebook-v-powercom--battling-social-networks.aspx
as does Twitter.
Posted by: Jamie
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April 27, 2009 11:03 AM
I've been messing around with the FB Open Streams API all morning and one thing's become crystal clear. It is not at all what it appears. Why? Unlike any other Atom feed or Activity Streams feed I've come across, you can't get persistent access to the stream. You only have access to it while the FB user is in your system. This is different than other FB Connect services that allow you to enable "offline_access". This SUCKS. It means you can't authorize something like FriendFeed to aggregate your FB activities unless you're going to keep a session open to it all the time.
The only thing that's cool here is that they've used the Activity Streams spec.. but then as Monica Keller, who runs the Activity Streams stuff at MySpace said tweeted earlier, they've gone out of spec by adding a ton of non-standard types which make it proprietary.
FB openness is a disaster and I hate the press they're getting. It's surprising seemingly 'cool' people like David Recordan and Chris Messina get so far behind it all the time.
Marshall -
methinks thou doth protest too much.
having access to tons of data is great, but not when it violates user privacy.
perhaps there's an argument here for access to aggregated / anonymized (sp?) data, but i certainly don't see how you can accuse Facebook of being "closed" by simply reflecting the existing level of availability of user data based on a user's FB Connect login.
example: my wife only wants me to upload photos of our kids to online services that have friends & family settings -- she explicitly DOES NOT want me to do so on wide open / asymmetric follow systems like blogs or Twitter (i recently removed most all of them from same).
now, how do you think she would feel if a 3rd-party service has access to that data, and somehow makes a decision to display / release access to data i've chosen to only make available to selected friends on Facebook proper?
is this really what you're advocating?
"well, users have a right to privacy except when there's a benefit to the greater society for sharing more explicitly..."
forgive me if i think now YOU are the one being a little bit totalitarian here.
please correct my misinterpretations as necessary, but i really don't want YOU (or any other 3rd party) deciding what the right level of privacy / openness i choose.
Marshall,
Recently, I've been really confused where you stand on -- actually, I'm not sure what to call it in aggregate, so let's just say the "real-time conversation."
A couple of weeks ago, you posted a story about how creepy you thought it was that marketers could track and respond to the things that everyone was saying on the web about their brand. ("This Machine Eats Tweets: The System Behind @Comcast and Others" - Apr. 7). A few days later, though, you wrote that you were excited about the future of social media monitoring even though much of it is "frighteningly intrusive and creepy." ("The Future of Social Media Monitoring" - Apr. 15).
And now you're advocating that Facebook open up its stream so that users can see what others (who aren't their friends) are saying.
Perhaps I'm just misunderstanding you, or perhaps you're really as conflicted about all this as you seem. Either way, so additional clarification on your thoughts about the real-time conversation and how open it should be would be very much appreciated. :)
Dave, I don't want to look at pictures of your family (though I'm sure they are charming) I want to be able to see that a member of a corporate Alum network who lives in S.F. has uploaded 125 photos this month and tagged 30 of them with their childrens' names. Or that members of the Stanford Network publish 10 photos per week on average. Maybe, I don't know exactly. That data, in anonymous aggregate, is what's interesting. Not photos of your kids. Not even photos as much as social connections and conversation topics analyzed for trends. Does that seem like such a bad idea?
Dear Josh, it's nice to know you care. I am conflicted on this, both frightened by the badness and very excited by the possiblities for innovation. Note that I don't want individuals to be able to see all the messages that non-friends post, I want developers and services to be able to analyze those conversations.
just again for emphasis:
PROPRIETARY != CLOSED
OPEN != BETTER
it's totally Facebook's choice whether or not to adopt a "standard", and/or whether to add "proprietary" features that others don't.
THIS IS ABSOLUTELY not the same as being "CLOSED".
furthermore, being "OPEN" is not BETTER, unless the developer community AND users decide that the resulting features are more interesting / useful, and they USE THEM or DO NOT USE THEM.
lastly, one person's level of openness / sharing should not be mandated by any others. if you decide you want to be a Nudist that's great... as long as i don't have to look at your private parts if i don't want to, and as long as you don't force me to be a Nudist when i'm on my own beach (or think i am).
@Dave
Uhm, Activity Streams (http://activitystrea.ms/) is an *open* standard. It's justbeing polluted by Facebook by adding 234234 non-standard types.
They get the press of saying HORRRRRAY WE'RE USING OPEN STANDARDS, and then they fuck it up and make it something else. It's perfect for them.
Marshall: aggregated & anonymized data is probably useful, and i'd support your call for Facebook eventually moving to make that data available (i'm not sure they'd disagree).
however, your current article is inflammatory and NOT AT ALL CLEAR that is what you're requesting / asking for.
to the extent that IS what you're suggesting / criticizing them for, i don't see how you can make the claim that Facebook remains "FUNDAMENTALLY" closed. that's just not accurate, and arguably false to the point of sensationalist.
if anything, Facebook's recent & previous moves are providing leadership in an industry full of OpenID bigots & idiots who've had their heads up their asses on any level of UI and explanation that is able to be understood by the average human being, much less a grandmother over 60 who can barely even spell LOGIN.
open standards are NOT useful when they are only understood by a small collection of geeks who take years to implement anything useful that's adopted by a small % of online users. it's elitist, not open... and worse, it's just plainly not useful.
you are obviously toting a borderline religious agenda, to accuse Facebook of being "Fundamentally Closed" (your headline) when they are at the forefront (if not FIRST in many cases) to:
1) provide a socially-aware app platform & newsfeed data
2) provide a 3rd-party auth/identity service like Connect
3) now enabling remote access to activity stream data
please drop the Open Standards religious agenda, and evaluate Facebook's features based on technical merit, user adoption, and competitive alternatives... not some Utopian idea of what you THINK they should be doing.
seriously: change the headline above, or i've lost faith in you as a tech journalist with integrity.
@Jason H: you obviously have no attention to detail.
i really don't give a damn about "open" standards.
i care about what's actually useful for 1) developers (technically-useful APIs & features), and more importantly 2) users (usability & adoption).
whether or not Facebook chooses to implement an "Open" standard, or introduce their own "proprietary" features doesn't f#cking matter one bit.
SMS might be a standard, but i don't think you'd argue that mobile phones have been monumentally retarded until Apple came along with the [INCREDIBLY PROPRIETARY] iPhone.
i'm not bashing the work that Messina & Recordon & others have done to promote OAuth and other standards. but to accuse Facebook of being "closed" simply because they choose not to adopt those standards uniformly, AND EVEN that they might want to innovate by doing something new and different (or "proprietary") is just being ignorant.
LOL@Dave
I dunno Dave, given the tone of your comments here I don't think *I'm* the one most fairly called a raving lunatic with an agenda. I also don't think that it's unfair at all to call Facebook fundamentally closed because of their core priority of privacy. I think it's totally fair to argue that this closed nature is *what users want* because privacy is more important to them than aggregate data analysis etc etc. I agree that Facebook has done alot of things really well, I'm really impressed with a lot of their work. But when it comes to openness, what I'm arguing here is that the big prize is still unwon because messaging and connections are not open enough for developers to perform cross-network analysis. That's one of the things I'm most excited about when it comes to social networks, but I'm concerned that Facebook isn't built for that at its core - so moves like this fall short of some things that would be awesome. Everyone else is singing their praises today for opening up to new interfaces, I'm arguing that there's a deeper level of value that deeper openness would enable. Doesn't seem unreasonable, unclear or sensationalist to me.
Dave, I think you've missed something... THEY HAVE IMPLEMENTED AN OPEN STANDARD. They've just bastardized it.
How is twitter not open? API gives access to all non-private updates - witness all the mashups built with Twitter data.
Posted by: Eric Johnson
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April 27, 2009 11:49 AM
Twitter are much more open then facebook. A simple example is this blog that give you all the hot trends on twitter (real time) - http://twitter-buzz.blogspot.com or really niche site on music dance trends: http://armin-van-buuren-1.blogspot.com
On facebook you can build an 'application' but with todays market you won't get the 'answers' from the people because facebook is much closer env.
@JasonH: sorry, no... you're the one that's missing something. implementing an open standard, bastardized or not, is not the Holy Grail. serving the best interests of developers, and ultimately users, is.
@Marshall: despite my (recent) role at Founders Fund and working on fbFund, i have no agenda other than getting pissed off when people set themselves up as God simply because they're working on a standards body, or claim that something is "bad" or "closed" because they choose not to adopt the standard in its entirety.
furthermore, your statement above that "respecting user privacy as a core priority" = "closed" is about as fundamentally narrow-minded as i've heard recently. i don't think it's fair at all, and i think you're fanning the flames of the open standards community on an issue that is frankly not an immediate or obvious user benefit.
if you want to complain they haven't gone far enough / encourage Facebook to do more, that's fine & dandy. but to get back on the old saw about them being closed when they've just released some very cool new features for remote access WHILE MAINTAINING USER PRIVACY STANDARDS is just unnecessarily antagonist, and detracts from the actual story of bringing useful technology to developers and beneficial features to users.
clearly, Facebook just did some good stuff for developers & users. however, you've obviously chosen to bury Caesar, not praise him. that's a shame.
The only problem I have with Facebook is that their API is a pain in the ass. They need something simple, like Twitter -- there's way too much data that has to remain stateless and can't be saved; regardless of whether the users allow it.
@Robert Dewey: please don't blame Facebook for not being Twitter... just go use Twitter. while it's true there is lots of data that's stateless & not private, it's not really YOUR choice to tell users what they should do.
it's like abortion -- don't like it? great, don't have one.
Dave, thanks for continuing to participate in this converation. It's good stuff, minus superflous insults both ways. I am not going to argue that complete adherence to open standards is important unless divergence inhibits interoperability, like the way that Open Social's promise of "build once deploy everywhere" was greatly mitigated by proprietary forks to the code.
More important to me is open access to the data. At this point remote access is a lot less interesting to me than the big juicey opportunity within sight where developers can analyze the data in aggregate. Like I said, I think today's news is cool. I'm just trying to put it in perspective. I think getting too excited about new interfaces for Facebook when there's a bigger picture would be a mistake.
I'm an employee of Facebook speaking purely on my own behalf.
Today we launched an API that many users and developers wanted. It's not the first API we've launched, and it won't be the last. We have an unlimited number of ideas and a very limited number of resources, so we prioritize based on what people want.
Like Dave, I'm not entirely clear what you're asking for here. This article begins:
"What are people saying on Facebook about the swine flu? Facebook knows, but they won't tell you."
You continue:
"Ask Twitter what people are saying on that site about the swine flu and you can get the full story to parse until you're blue in the face."
This has nothing to do with an API or strategy; it has to do with privacy. If someone shares an update about swine flu with their friends, we are not going to expose that to the world. It's not enough simply to mask the user's name, because they may have posted something like this: "I just heard that my college roommate, Bob Jones, has contracted swine flu. Please send him your condolences: 555-555-5555".
Could Facebook divulge the number of people who have mentioned "swine flu"? Yes. We already do: http://www.facebook.com/lexicon/new/ (preview) and http://www.facebook.com/lexicon/.
Could we release an API to retrieve the number of people who have mentioned "swine flu" programmatically? Sure.
Would such an API enable better and more globally useful applications than the stream API we just launched? According to users and developers: No. And as a member of both communities, I agree with that consensus.
This article insinuates that Facebook is strategically withholding information, but I've never heard that suggestion from anyone at the company, nor do I see the logic of it. The API released today effectively allows someone to recreate the core Facebook experience on another site. It strikes me as far more competitive than the service you are requesting here.
I believe it is disingenuous to summarize Facebook as "fundamentally closed" because we have yet to build an API that would primarily be of interest to researchers and marketing companies. We've opened all of the information that users have granted permission to open, and that most developers have asked for.
It seems that some articles can take any story, no matter how positive, and reposition it in a negative light. When we surpassed 200 million users, TechCrunch ran the baffling headline: "Zuckerberg Admits Facebook Now Has 200 Million Users".
Everyone I know at Facebook reads feedback hungrily and incorporates it into their work. If there are honest critiques of today's launch, we are listening.
"...and the Terms of Service will prohibit eyes outside of a user's Facebook friends from seeing the massive amounts of friend-limited data."
Um, isn't the whole point is that the data is friend-limited? Why should non-friends gain access to "friend-limited" data?
Twitter started as a generally open conversation which people could make more private if needed. Facebook started as private conversations which people can now make more open if desired. Two different approaches, both of which have merits and downsides, especially depending on the user and the specific use.
Facebook is certainly making steps, though - their decisions to add the "Everyone" group to their privacy controls makes even more sense with the Stream API. They may not have opened the floodgates yet, but they're adding features (like this one) that allow for those who want openness to get more of it while still letting other users maintain the privacy they desire.
But if a user does desire that privacy and chooses to make their data "friend-limited," it's the user's decision to keep things a walled garden, and Facebook is simply enforcing that.
@9 Jason
'They get the press of saying HORRRRRAY WE'RE USING OPEN STANDARDS, and then they fuck it up and make it something else. It's perfect for them.'
Sounds awfully 1990s to me, that way of business thinking.
I'm with Marshall on this - the US Census has a massive amount of personally identifiable data, yet manages (somehow) to release the raw (useful) data without violating anyone's privacy concerns. Folks like our buddy Dave are stuck on the privacy issue, as am I (guess I'm a folk like Dave) but this hasn't anything to do with privacy.
Great article Marshall - with you all the way.
Marshall: apologies if my comments and/or emotion feel like insults or attack. while i may disagree with you strongly, i don't mean to be inappropriate... it's just my usual Scots Irish / Italian "conversation", sans big red bold fonts.
maybe i'm a little hot in my response, but i've always felt that you were incredibly insightful & thoughtful in your writing & i respect that. in this particular case, i'm not thrilled with your perspective, but i respect your right to call it as you see it.
Dave:
"...it's not really YOUR choice to tell users what they should do."
Not sure I follow? I'm just saying Facebook's API has too many restrictions on what can be stored, even by consenting users. I'm not sure that I'm telling users what they should do.
I totally get the privacy issue that Blake brings up...
Blake, thanks for your thoughtful comment. It's an honor and thanks for creating Firefox. A few thoughts in response:
"This has nothing to do with an API or strategy; it has to do with privacy. "
- What gets exposed in the API is limited by privacy concerns, which is part of the company's core strategy.
"I believe it is disingenuous to summarize Facebook as "fundamentally closed" because we have yet to build an API that would primarily be of interest to researchers and marketing companies. We've opened all of the information that users have granted permission to open, and that most developers have asked for."
- Interesting point here. Would never want to cheer for something only of interest to marketing companies. Researchers are pretty important, though. Lots of other folks can add value on top of open data though. Look at Twellow.com, for example, a Twitter directly split out by occupation, built via analysis of user description fields and wildly useful. Or Mailana, a Twitter app that helps you discover circles of influence in Twitter by analyzing public @ replies. I use both of those for research as a journalist and recommend them frequently. Both are possible because of the fundamentally open nature of Twitter.
- Finally, the arguement that "users haven't asked for it" doesn't seem to make a lot of sense because so many of the most important things Facebook has contributed to the web weren't asked for by users. Newsfeeds, app platforms, you name it. I think a dev platform that makes messaging and social connections wide open for anonymous analysis would be a huge boon for the web and for the world.
Twitter is completely open
Posted by: Angus Burton
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April 27, 2009 12:48 PM
@Blake -- first off, you're completely right about titles to news articles -- as a writer, we try to sum things up in it, and we're trying to make it juicy. This is like how the news on TV is too, or newspapers. A newspaper reporter friend of mine says, "If 100,000 airplanes depart without a problem from an airport, but 1 crashes -- the only story that'll run is the 1 that crashes, because people want to hear that" (although I think a lot of us beg to differ).
@Dave -- before I read your comment stream, I was fine with the title. Now I'm conflicted. 'Fundamentally' is true depending on who's opinion it is. If we're comparing Twitter and things said by people, then absolutely Facebook is 'fundamentally' closed. If Facebook were to have real-time search under their current data model, to a user, it would only take into account what their friends are saying about something. Not necessarily a bad thing, depending on who's opinion it is.
Twitter was built open by default in regards to privacy, whereas Facebook has been closed by default in regards to privacy. [Remember MySpace back in the day? That was open by default, until Facebook apparently was onto something users wanted, and they started encouraging more privacy to attract those users (back)].
Facebook could start asking users if they'd like to open up their profiles, or just part of their profiles (like Twitter, maybe just their name, city, and then any status updates or share stuff).
@Marshall -- The title could reflect specifically what's still 'fundamentally closed', or you could make 2 posts -- one post on how you'd like to see aggregated anonymous 'census-like' data, and one post on the news today.
Thanks for the article Marshall, as it did generate a great debate here (which most people won't ever see unfortunately).
Great article and overview, and interesting analysis from Marshall here.
Generally speaking I do agree with Blake in that APIs can only reflect the policies and terms around the data and functionality they represent. When you setup a developer platform you immediately realize that its not about the technology at all - that's easy. It's about policy and legal and herding cats around that.
I do also think that a situation where the API team dictates the policy and ultimately ethos of the company really is akin to the tail wagging the dog. The company itself has to want to be open (in all senses of the word) otherwise it doesn't work.
At the moment Facebook doesn't want to be open, and having helped built a platform for a social network that has profiles publicly available as a default I can see the pros and cons. It certainly makes it easier to represent a profile if the data is already public.
For me the issue is not whether Facebook is open or not - but what impact that has upon innovation that can/cannot occur because of it.
We're a long way off from users choosing which services to put their data into based on the viability of what can be built on top of their input... but that is ultimately the outcome. That's why there is so much cool stuff that can be done with your twitter account and twitter stream, because it's a pro-innovation platform.
To Dave's perspectives - I was very facinated by the volume of his posts here. Dave, I love you to bits man but I do feel like you are somewhat conflicted based on your role with the Founders Fund (big investor in FB), FBFund (naturally) and also the other FB platform work you've done - such as the Stanford course. You also wrote a blog post on this area on the offical FB Developers Blog last week :P
You're well in there with FB -- nothing wrong with that, but I feel you should consider the veracity of your comments all things given [or maybe I shouldn't consider objective commentary, I dunno! :P ] Even I'm a little biased, I guess, because of my work on MySpace - although I've not worked there since November and I'm pretty critical of their implementation since I left.
I respect Marshal for not being conflicted on any of this - and for him not jumping on the bandwagon, sipping the koolaid and smoking the crack around the impact of the real-time social web.
He's thinking out loud, sharing his musings and considering the wider implications. I wish more people were.
Can't wait to discuss and debate this more with folks tonight at the FB event.
Posted by: benmetcalfe.com
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April 27, 2009 1:18 PM
wow, the article plus the comments is like 10 articles in one. cool.
This is a wonderful step forward, but it would be tremendously helpful for us and many other developers if public activity stream items (those that users would allow to be seen by anyone in the public), could be published as an RSS or Atom feed. I don't think it would be that difficult to do.
I'm guessing if Facebook did provide this kind of info, it would require them to update their terms of service, again.
come on guys. Twitter is not "completely open". where is the openmicroblogging support? xmpp firehose for all? It's "open" insofar as "you can have any colour you want, as long as its black". I love the service but right now its akin to being only able to email those with the same @domain.com as you.
Posted by: Jamie
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April 27, 2009 1:42 PM
jamie - agreed
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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April 27, 2009 1:44 PM
I wonder how much of Facebook's API limitations are due to privacy concerns vs. business concerns. To be honest, both are valid but I'm not sure hiding behind a private excuse will help them in the future.
@dave: I am not sure I understand the vehemence @dave since to @benmetcalf's and @marshallk's point you do come across as if someone just insulted your kids (which having met think are appropriately adorable).
To the discusion - I am not sure how you can say fb is not "fundamentally" closed. Now I understand your reaction since your concern was whether "fundamental" meant inherently bad. But being closed, from a user's perspective, is exactly the point of facebook.
Now the idea of opening your service to 3rd party developers when you are fundamentally closed does create some interesting product challenges vis-a-vis the other social platform which is "fundamentally" open - twitter.
The larger discussion is really - what does facebook's api set offer vs. twitter's api set? Does one inspire one set of apps - perhaps fb's point to group apps where inclusion and privacy are valued vs. twitter which is now powering public communities. Twitter is likely going to face similar challenges if it ever attempts to implement "closed" features ie. conditional access. Regardless it's an interesting race. And personally the less FB is like Twitter and vice-versa, then the better we all would be.
i think i wouldn't have been as hot if the headline were "Fundamentally Private" instead of "Fundamentally Closed".
there's no doubt different features / data / etc offered by both Twitter and Facebook. that's cool... more opportunities are better.
but i don't see anyone ripping on Twitter for not offering "the ability to maintain greater user privacy in their APIs". and that's also cool. that would be stupid & not necessary.
Twitter is awesome. they offer some really cool stuff, the developer community is doing amazing client apps, and the popularity of "asymmetric follow" as a paradigm is pretty amazing -- rivaling FB's own accomplishments around popularizing newsfeed & making socially-aware applications. i'm thoroughly addicted to both services, and they're both doing cool stuff for developers AND users.
thus, my reaction to Marshall's post was: WTF? why is he calling Facebook CLOSED when they just released a feature to make data available remotely to 3rd-parties who are using Connect? more to the point, what up with the "Facebook has data on swine flu, but they won't tell you about it" crap?
if you're going to make a mountain out of lack of access to aggregated/anonymized data, and/or default settings = private vs open, that's certainly valid. the rest of it ain't.
@BenMetcalfe: i'm not shy about pimping Facebook, and that started way before i was working for Founders Fund / fbFund. i think they've been doing cool shit for awhile (tho not always perfect, and the recent implementation of 3rd-party access to Feed is way overdue). that said, i don't feel conflicted at all in calling out Marshall on the headline or the swine flu stuff.
call me a fanboy if u will, but there are plenty of other more important things to start a fire over. like how about why it's taken 3 years for OpenID to get any amount of reasonable traction, and the UI still sucks ass. or how about neither Google nor MySpace did anything interesting on social apps or platforms until after Facebook started a revolution, and now it's Google & MySpace waving the "open standards" banner. all well & good now, but let's not forget what motivated them -- getting their butts handed to them in social networking, and getting scared shitless they were going to become irrelevant if they didn't start competing. it wasn't any high-minded discussion around open standards, it was bare-knuckled fear & greed over losing the hearts & minds of users and developers.
i'm all for open standards being helpful to users. but the free market of competition and proprietary standards arguably provides most people and users with faster & better innovation.
so let's stop trashing Facebook and get back to building shit.
and may the best -- not the most "Open" -- API win.
Marshall,
Thanks for the response. Some thoughts:
"What gets exposed in the API is limited by privacy concerns, which is part of the company's core strategy"
- I don't consider privacy to be a core strategy. Internally we define our strategy by the mission we've stated publicly: to enable everyone in the world to share easily and efficiently with the audiences of their choosing. It's true that many people choose to share with small sets of people, so we make that easy, but we also make it easy for people to share with others around them (regional, work or school networks) or everyone in the world (the Everyone option, or Facebook Pages). To the extent that people are becoming more comfortable sharing publicly online, we want to help them.
I realize it may be futile to make statements like this because people interpret it as PR-speak, but the truth is that I wouldn't work at a company if it had an internal strategy that was deviously divorced from its public mission.
"I think a dev platform that makes messaging and social connections wide open for anonymous analysis would be a huge boon for the web and for the world."
- But as I noted earlier, Facebook could never open up all of its messaging for anonymous analysis because many messages contain private information even if you obscure their authors. AOL made a small sample of user search queries available in 2006 and they were excoriated by users and media alike. And rightly so, because the data was not nearly as 'anonymous' as they claimed: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE3DD1F3FF93AA3575BC0A9609C8B63
I agree that there are interesting applications to be built on top of aggregated data. Google Flu Trends is a great example, and I think our Facebook Lexicon is another. But it would not be possible for someone else to build Google Flu Trends because Google has not exposed access to the raw stream of user searches. We can speculate or hint or imply that this is because Google doesn't want to play nice, but as a user, I'm glad that only Google could build that application.
In my opinion, what you're really suggesting is that Facebook encourage more users to change their privacy settings. But I believe that is a fundamentally different debate than this one, which seems to imply that Facebook could simultaneously respect user privacy and expose a world-changing API. I'm just not convinced that's possible.
The article begins "What are people saying on Facebook about the swine flu? Facebook knows, but they won't tell you." I believe the real answer here is that tens of millions of people have decided not to tell. As developers and researchers we can lament that, but that seems to be a larger debate about Internet culture rather than a debate on Facebook strategy.
This blog is a breath of fresh air for someone like me who is skeptical of Facebook. Every other tech blog tends to just regurgitate Facebook press releases, tout the benefits of their announcements, and avoid taking any sort of critical eye to the matter.
I hear Facebook proponents constantly contradicting themselves on issues, other than their unwavering love for the company. For example, Mr. Dave McClure argues that Facebook should be congratulated for this API because it is in the best interest of users and developers. Then, someone points out that the API is a pain for developers compared to Twitter, and McClure immediately tells him that Facebook has the right to be what it wants and if he doesn't like it, go use Twitter. Kind of hilarious.
It's obvious to any objective observer that Twitter is the model of the future. It is brilliant in its simplicity. It makes it clear that the control you have over your privacy ends at your fingertips, and in this regard, it feels much safer than Facebook.
Facebook's privacy settings seem more of a way to make people feel safe than to actually make them safer. When the point that people are losing jobs over content posted to Facebook was made to Zuckerberg, he replied sarcastically, "Well, we do have privacy controls." Well guess what? People don't understand them. So, no matter how intricate they are, they are not as good as Twitter's single boolean privacy control.
Facebook makes a lot of features. They come out with a lot of press releases. They change their site a lot. The only consistency I have seen in their approach to their business is that they are trying to take over the world and IPO. As a user, I can say, "It's been fun while it lasted. But I have no loyalty to the service. As soon as something better comes along, I'm jumping ship." Well, Twitter has come along, and open solutions have come along, and I feel safer with a federate social ecosystem, with clear simple privacy features, than I do with sending all of my personal data through a company that seems prepared to monetize me at all costs.
Sure, it's a business and they need to make money. But the amount of money they need to make to justify their valuation is going to corrupt the service. It's simply not a business that is worth what everyone says it is unless it does things that its users don't want it to do.
Twitter on the other hand does not have that dilemma.
Well facebook has a lesson to learn from history. I blogged about this more than a week back. See my URL.
First off, excellent post, Marshall. The level of heat in the comment thread is usually indicative of striking raw nerves on all sides. So what are those raw nerves? 1. Media types are in the business of choosing provocative, sensationalist titles, that suck in eyeballs and understandably irritate the named. It is what it is, but letâs not pretend that the purpose is different than calling fire in a crowded theater. 2. Those who have built platforms know all too well the quip about open standards; namely that there are âso many to choose from.â What works, what is embraced, what solves the problem is more important than the label âopen.â Thatâs not to say that âopenâ and âsolves the problem really well,â are mutually exclusive. Just suggesting tail and dog relationship. 3. Facebook, for better or worse, has a perceived reputation of deciding from on high fairly big policy decisions (ad targeting, TOS changes, platform decisions), rolling out first and then apologizing versus broadly socializing before...
Help me understand, Jamie & Marshall. Are you guys saying Twitter is not open b/c of the rate limiting stuff -- the fact that Friendfeed gets access to the new, high-speed APIs and others don't (or don't yet)? I tend to think think it's pretty open because a Summize could be built. (Which is not an option on FB b/c of the nature of that service -- privacy controls, etc.) Help me understand your POV.
Posted by: Eric Johnson
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April 28, 2009 1:22 PM
First off, excellent post, Marshall. The level of heat in the comment thread is usually indicative of striking raw nerves on all sides. So what are those raw nerves? 1. Media types are in the business of choosing provocative, sensationalist titles, that suck in eyeballs and understandably irritate the named. It is what it is, but letâs not pretend that the purpose is different than calling fire in a crowded theater. 2. Those who have built platforms know all too well the quip about open standards; namely that there are "so many to choose from." What works, what is embraced, what solves the problem is more important than the label "open." Thatâs not to say that "open" and "solves the problem really well," are mutually exclusive. Just suggesting tail and dog relationship. 3. Facebook, for better or worse, has a perceived reputation of deciding from on high fairly big policy decisions (ad targeting, TOS changes, platform decisions), rolling out first and then apologizing versus broadly socializing before implementing. I am...
Yes, yes! I think the issue should not be about openness qua openness, but rather, what can I realistically *do* with that data that is relevant and useful.
Great discussion. Blake, thanks for joining this discussion and giving a clear, unemotional explanation of your perception from inside Facebook's walls.
I fall in line with Dave and Blake on this discussion, and strongly against Marshall's.
I feel that a fundamental facet of Marshall's argument is that Facebook should be more like Twitter and the census. But I signed up for Facebook and Twitter because they are DIFFERENT products. And I like it that way, and want it to stay that way.
My status feed on Facebook is very different than my Twitter feed. My Twitter feed says how much I like the MLB 2009 app on the iPhone; my Facebook status grumbles that I got wet this morning.
I recognize that the two audiences are different, and that one is a public discourse and one is a private bulletin board. I'm a user first and a developer second; I analyze the tools available to communicate with my friends / the world as a user, and I analyze the tools available to meet a project's goal as a developer.
People take the census because they want to be represented in government. People Tweet and the world can hear the whisper; a "live" census of sorts. But people are on Facebook to make sure the world can't hear their whispers.
Yes, Facebook does have access to very valuable data -- but I'd like to think (perhaps naively) that data is mine, not some corporation's. I know that's not entirely the case, but I want Facebook to act like it is. And if Facebook wants to develop, within their walls, a few routines to analyze topics (such as their Lexicon tool), I'm ok with that -- because I've trusted Facebook with my data, and thus far haven't done anything with malicious with it. So I'll trust them to look at a few things in the aggregate.
But the minute they allow too much access to my data, as a user, then they'll lose that trust.
In other words, I don't mind Facebook aggregating data and reporting on the aggregate. What I do mind is Facebook allowing others to do the aggregating for them. I agree with Blake, that for a 3rd party to be able to do aggregation of the data, too much information has to be exposed. And if Facebook wants to aggregate themselves, and allow an API call into their aggregation... that's fine. Facebook is still protecting my data, that way. But then Facebook becomes an aggregation service, which isn't necessarily their core competence or within their business model. If their priorities are elsewhere, good for them.
Because Facebook isn't Twitter. And Twitter isn't Facebook. And arguing that one should become more like the other is, in my opinion, asinine.
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It's a networked world and we should be able to have our cake and eat it too in terms of secure conversation and network effects anonymously analyzed in aggregate.
Really nice and has a flowing narrative. Thanks
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Really nice and has a flowing narrative. Thanks
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