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YCRFS 7: Applications of Facebook Instant Personalization

ycombinator.com

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Re: YCRFS 7: Applications of Facebook Instant Personalization

#21

Post by pmjordan »

jogle wrote: post #8
_delirium wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd consider myself pretty tech-savvy, and I'm still unsure how exactly to do that. The last I heard, I had to individually block each site that I didn't want my data shared with, and the only three I've seen mentioned are Yelp, Pandora, and Microsoft Docs. Is there some place I can monitor for new additions? Or is there a way I can just say, "block all apps by default unless I explicitly enable them?"

http://www.facebook.com/#!/settings/?tab=privacy&section... Click "Edit your settings" down at the bottom left. Click "Edit your settings" on the "Instant Personalization" setting. Uncheck the box on the next page.

I get:

[✓] Enable instant personalisation on partner websites. Note: instant personalisation is not yet available for you.

The tick is greyed out, so I guess it's not yet active. But I have no way of telling when it will become active, and no way of disabling it preemptively. Another reason to only log onto facebook in incognito/privacy mode.

Re: YCRFS 7: Applications of Facebook Instant Personalization

#22

Post by mechanical_fish »

Okay, before we go anywhere I need a couple of answers.

A. Is Instant Personalization ("InP") built on an open protocol?

In other words, if I build foo.example.com and it uses InP to access Facebook's social graph, and later on I decide I also want to support Google's social graph, will Google be able to serve that graph using the same InP protocol? Or can I write a middleware service that grabs data with InP, massages the data (e.g. "filter out only the friends who live in a particular zip code") and reexports the data using the InP protocol?

Or will Facebook's lawyers be fighting such a move every step of the way?

B. Okay, we're playing in Facebook's world, the world where everyone has a public social graph and everything in their profile is public, public, public. Fine. But does this mean that, if I use Instant Personalization to grab a user's extremely-public social graph, I'm allowed to use it as I would any other public information that I stumbled across on the web? Can I, for example, index it and search it? Or can I write a tool that populates a second social network's database with a list of friends from Facebook?

Or will Facebook's InP terms of service require that I avoid doing that, because what "public" really means is "everyone can look at it, but only if they pay Facebook one cent every time they look and promise not to take any pictures or remember anything?"

Re: YCRFS 7: Applications of Facebook Instant Personalization

#23

Post by AgentConundrum »

chrischen wrote: post #15
pvg wrote: post #13

It seems like the real challenge here is coming up with interesting and useful applications of this that also don't feel like 'Instant Creepoutification'. Weren't there Amazon badges/buttons on third party sites that included your name, some years ago? They seem to have gone out of style, maybe due to their inherent creepiness?

It's only creepy if the personalization is tacked on and out of place. If integration were done in a meaningful manner, for example if you were on a site and you wished you could see the site in the context of your social circle, then such integration probably wouldn't be creepy. It would done in such a way where the integration is part of the core value offer. But say I'm reading an article and it says "your mother…

Creepy is the ugly girl who stares at you, but the pretty one who does it isn't.

Forgive me for quoting Saturday Night Live[1] here, but I guess this a successful implementation of this feature boils down to:

- Be Handsome^W Usable

- Be Attractive

- Don't Be Unattractive

Really, those are rules that apply to any feature on any website. Nobody likes useless features.

[1] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBVuAGFcGKY

Re: YCRFS 7: Applications of Facebook Instant Personalization

#24

Post by eugenejen »

arnorhs wrote: post #18
eugenejen wrote: post #11

Hi Paul, My current company (thehotlist.com) has been working on what you asked in these two paragraphs for two years. "Facebook began by testing Instant Personalization with a handful of popular existing sites. But the interesting question for us is: what new things could be built using it that couldn't even have existed before? What new things could you do if you already knew users and their friends the moment they…

I'm not pg but I don't really understand this website. What does it do? I signed in and saw a map of my location. Tried to change my location, but no luck. The name sounds like it's a list of something that's currently hot/cool or something like that, but it seems like a check-in thing (according to the interface) Also, the font you are using in cufon doesn't have any foreign characters, so my name is displayed as: A…

Thanks Arnór. This is very useful feedback because you are outside our test data point.

By the way, when you tried to change your location, did you try to type the location into the text box? Can I know what did you type so I can test on my end?

Re: YCRFS 7: Applications of Facebook Instant Personalization

#25

Post by gdltec »

The problem I see with this is that the application I create will be dependent on Facebook's service, what if I want to use something else? what if my application is so successful that Facebook decides to create a service/app that does what mines does? This is the problem with building on top of existing services such as Twitter, Facebook, etc... I see the benefits these companies get by letting other developers test new "features", if they see something having some success then they just implement it themselves...

Re: YCRFS 7: Applications of Facebook Instant Personalization

#26

Post by Tichy »

swedegeek wrote: post #3

This is very frightening news. Even if I did want this feature at all (I don't), I would still be extremely concerned that some site that I might wind up on will capture any personally identifiable about me when I really don't want them too. Hopefully this link is lacking in some critical details in regards to seurity and privacy. It's one thing if I put info into a particular site, but very not cool if other sites c…

It should work like for example location: with a popup asking me if it is OK to share my FB data with the given site.

Re: YCRFS 7: Applications of Facebook Instant Personalization

#27

Post by arnorhs »

eugenejen wrote: post #24
arnorhs wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not pg but I don't really understand this website. What does it do? I signed in and saw a map of my location. Tried to change my location, but no luck. The name sounds like it's a list of something that's currently hot/cool or something like that, but it seems like a check-in thing (according to the interface) Also, the font you are using in cufon doesn't have any foreign characters, so my name is displayed as: A…

Thanks Arnór. This is very useful feedback because you are outside our test data point. By the way, when you tried to change your location, did you try to type the location into the text box? Can I know what did you type so I can test on my end?

Yes, I did. I typed in "Mjoahlid 8, Reykjavik, Iceland", which works fine in google maps (I saw you were using google maps).

when I type that into your box it gets converted into "Capital Region, Iceland". Which is not very accurate :)

Re: YCRFS 7: Applications of Facebook Instant Personalization

#28

Post by notahacker »

JarekS wrote: post #19

We do a real-time communication and relationship management (CRM) software and currently thinking of this RFS but would like to hear some feedback first. First - our system lets businesses to invite their customers and prospects to the joint workspace (target customers are B2B companies. Facebook-like system - see screenshots here: http://blog.smartupz.com/2010/08/summary-of-key-elements-of-... ). If the sales cycle…

Not many b2b social networks are based on Facebook social relationships...

Re: YCRFS 7: Applications of Facebook Instant Personalization

#29

Post by MyBoxnRama »

notahacker wrote: post #28
JarekS wrote: post #19

We do a real-time communication and relationship management (CRM) software and currently thinking of this RFS but would like to hear some feedback first. First - our system lets businesses to invite their customers and prospects to the joint workspace (target customers are B2B companies. Facebook-like system - see screenshots here: http://blog.smartupz.com/2010/08/summary-of-key-elements-of-... ). If the sales cycle…

Not many b2b social networks are based on Facebook social relationships...

But there are humans working for b2b companies, no?

Re: YCRFS 7: Applications of Facebook Instant Personalization

#30

Post by ahaugen »

_delirium wrote: post #10
jogle wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/settings/?tab=privacy&section... Click "Edit your settings" down at the bottom left. Click "Edit your settings" on the "Instant Personalization" setting. Uncheck the box on the next page.

I've done that, but I was remembering some posts (e.g. http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/how-opt-out-facebook-s-... ) that claimed that was insufficient. It seems it depends on how much you want to block; even if you opt out of instant personalization, the API will still let apps slurp some data through your friends (though not data deemed private), unless you've also explicitly blocked that app. The main thing mi…

Hey there. I'm Austin Haugen, a product manager on the Facebook platform team. If you opt out of Instant Personalization by following the steps above, you will never receive an instantly personalized experience on these sites and we also block the sites for you, so when your friends arrive your information will not be accessible. This was a change we made in May based on user feedback.
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