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Larry Page Calls Out Facebook For Lack Of Social Data Portability

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Re: Larry Page Calls Out Facebook For Lack Of Social Data Portability

#2
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.

Re: Larry Page Calls Out Facebook For Lack Of Social Data Portability

#3
post #2

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…

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...

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.

Re: Larry Page Calls Out Facebook For Lack Of Social Data Portability

#5
post #4

...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.

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.

Re: Larry Page Calls Out Facebook For Lack Of Social Data Portability

#6
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.

Re: Larry Page Calls Out Facebook For Lack Of Social Data Portability

#7
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.

Re: Larry Page Calls Out Facebook For Lack Of Social Data Portability

#8
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.

Re: Larry Page Calls Out Facebook For Lack Of Social Data Portability

#9
post #7

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",…

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...

Re: Larry Page Calls Out Facebook For Lack Of Social Data Portability

#10
post #4

...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.

Google do share the percentage of advertising revenue that they give to publishers: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/05/adsense-revenue-share.ht...

(It’s 68% for AdSense for content, and 51% for Adsense for search.)

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