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Begun, the Data Wars Have

Written By Drupad Sil | May 16, 2008 | Share This |

MySpace

In the last week, we’ve seen a host of announcements relating to data portability. MySpace kicked things off by revealing a data partnership with Twitter. Facebook followed with Facebook Connect, and Google got in the act with Google Friend Connect. Essentially, it’s an arms race between these three groups with two objectives: to get the most users to store their data centrally, and to build partnerships with popular sites to incentivize users to store their data with one site over another (basically, “look at all the other cool sites you can export your data to if you pick me”). In the spirit of data portability, one might have expected that the three sites would be ‘open’ (pun intended) to letting their users share data across the competing products. Facebook quickly corrected that little assumption with an announcement yesterday. From the Facebook Developers’ Blog:

“In the past, when we found applications passing user data to another party (for instance, to ad networks for the purpose of targeting), we suspended those applications and worked with those developers to ensure they respect user privacy. Now that Google has launched Friend Connect, we’ve had a chance to evaluate the technology. We’ve found that it redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users’ knowledge, which doesn’t respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our Terms of Service. Just as we’ve been forced to do for other applications that redistribute data in a way users might not expect or understand, we’ve had to suspend Friend Connect’s access to Facebook user information until it comes into compliance.”

The above (innocuously posted under a heading of “Thoughts on Privacy”) represents the first salvo in what is turning into a battle over user data. Apparently sites that are partners in the OpenID initiative can be somewhat open, but not entirely open, leading some to question if these products represent the coming of real data portability. There’s an interesting post by David Recordan at O’Reilly radar on the topic:

“…MySpace said that due to their terms of service the participating sites (e.g. Twitter) would not be allowed to cache or store any of the profile information. In my mind this led to the Data Availability API being structured in one of two ways: 1) on each page load Twitter makes a request to MySpace fetching the protected profile information via OAuth to then display on their site or 2) Twitter includes JavaScript which the browser then uses to fill in the corresponding profile information when it renders the page. Either case is not an example of data portability no matter how you define the term!”

So, what’s Facebook’s motivation in doing this, other than drawing a line in the sand for its users and competitors? Why do they feel threatened by Google, which doesn’t have a social network of its own in the traditional sense? Michael Arrington at TechCrunch lays it out nicely:

“[MySpace and Facebook] know that to keep users happy, and to stop them from entering in all that friend data into other sites, they need to make their data at least somewhat portable. Not too portable, mind you. That means they’d lose control. But just portable enough. That’s why they are launching their products…

Google is a little different. They don’t have a social networking presence in the U.S., so they are trying to get in the middle between the guys with the profiles (like Facebook) and the sites that want the data. Their Friend Connect product does just that, and makes them an important data middle man. That position can later be leveraged intensely. In fact, in many ways Google can become the most important social network without actually having a social network. Facebook, of course, doesn’t want this. And that’s the real reason why they blocked them today (although the rumor is that the two companies are talking tomorrow about some sort of compromise).”

Who’s right and who’s wrong in this specific instance is debatable. There are those who believe that Google is wrong for creating an app that shares data in such a way and supposedly has “stale” information. And there are those who argue that Facebook has no right to determine what applications can or cannot be utilized by users to share their personal data. Regardless of who ultimately compromises on this round, this type of skirmish is only indicative of the beginnings of a full-blown user data war.

Google Friend Connect Makes Any Site Social

Written By Drupad Sil | May 12, 2008 | Share This |

Connect

Last week we discussed MySpace’s move to position itself as a central web hub by allowing the portability of user data to a host of other social networking sites. Facebook quickly responded with Facebook Connect and its partnership with Digg, and today Google has revealed a similar feature, aptly called Google Friend Connect. From the release at the Google Press Center:

“Websites that are not social networks may still want to be social – and now they can be, easily. With Google Friend Connect, any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running immediately without programming – picking and choosing from built-in functionality like user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, as well as third-party applications built by the OpenSocial developer community.

Visitors to any site using Google Friend Connect will be able to see, invite, and interact with new friends, or, using secure authorization APIs, with existing friends from social sits on the web, including Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, orkut, Plaxo, and more.”

Naturally, in the end this move is all about controlling user data, despite what Google may claim about liking a healthier Web for everyone. We spoke to this a couple weeks ago with this post on Google locking in user’s files and preferences data, another form of control. This slew of announcements shows that these companies are rushing to be that one website that users choose to store their data at and export it from. Unfortunately for Google, they don’t have the millions of user profiles that Facebook and MySpace do simply because they aren’t a social network (outside of Orkut), but this may not as limiting as it appears at first glance. Michael Arrington at TechCrunch explains why:

“Google may be keeping a tighter reign on data, requiring third parties to show it directly from Google’s servers in an iframe. By contrast, MySpace and Facebook are sending data via an API and trusting third parties not to abuse it. That flexibility also allows those third parties to do more with the data, including combining it with their own data before displaying it.

But what’s clear is that Google wants to get in between social networks and the web sites that want access to their data. By controlling the flow through Open Social and the new Friend Connect product, they can effectively become a huge social network without actually having a, well, social network.”

It’ll be interesting to see which of the Big Three is able to become central for more people, but if Google manages to stay in between Open Social and end users, they may turn out to be the big winner, again.

MySpace Joins DataPortability Project

Written By Drupad Sil | May 9, 2008 | Share This |

MySpace

Some news that broke late yesterday. MySpace announced that it had officially joined the DataPortability Project, an initiative that pushes for user control over personal data access and use by other applications, open source solutions, and bottom-up distribution solutions for said data. From the official DataPortability blog:

“MySpace joins other existing corporate members such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, LinkedIn, SixApart, and Digg. We are excited that MySpace will join the rest of the community to continue the design, documentation, and implementation of a set of best practices for inter-operable Data Portability between trusted applications and vendors.”

MySpace’s announcement basically stated that they are embracing the DataPortability best practices and had already started data sharing partnerships with Yahoo, Ebay, Twitter, and Photobucket. Eric Eldon at Venturebeat explains what the data sharing entails for users:

“Users will be able to do things like update their own photos on their MySpace profiles, then have those photos automatically update on other sites that use MySpace photos. Besides photos, information that will be shared will include publicly available basic profile information, MySpace TV videos, and friend networks…

If you want to be able to control what information goes from MySpace to Twitter, you will be able to access a central control panel that will be provided on the MySpace site, that will let you stop information from going from MySpace to Twitter.”

This seemingly small change has major implications for online social networking. Michael Arrington at TechCrunch explains:

“Historically MySpace has lagged Facebook in terms of innovation. But they definitely “get it” this time. Sharing user data so openly (with user permission) is a terrific way to incentivize users to store all their core data at MySpace to begin with. Users eventually need one place on the Internet to store their data, or lots of places to store different types of data. But what they don’t want is today’s world where they are recreating and storing the same data over a plethora of social networks just because all those sites refuse to share. We’re starting to see the floodgates open and the idea of data sharing become a reality…

By acting first, MySpace takes the lead and has a shot at being the long term winner – meanings lots of people use MySpace as their place to store data, and share it out to other applications from there. Look for Google to make their move next.”

It’s definitely an overdue concept, and timely for MySpace as NewsCorp owner Rupert Murdoch went on record as stating the social networking site had missed his financial targets. We’ll have to see if the world’s biggest social network can get any bigger.