My social graph is between me and my friends; it’s not Facebook data. If you’ve added me as a friend and made your contact info available, then I should be able to export that data and use it where I want to.

It’s like you giving me your phone number, but telling me not to ever call you because it would invade your privacy.

I’m your *friend*, Facebook isn’t.

To all you people who support Facebook in this matter (in *any* way whatsoever), you really should just get off the internet, because you obviously don’t get it.

Plaxo is one of my favorite online services (I know I’m pretty lonely at that…) [1]. If you peel away the spam issues they had, etc - the core idea is pretty powerful:If historically I had to maintain and keep…

The deal is Plaxo knew this was wrong, Scoble knew it was wrong and Facebook has every right to cancel accounts, block access or legally going after Plaxo for hacking into Facebook.

We had not planned to roll out Facebook Import that early or in the manner that unfolded. Looks like we ignited an important debate about who owns what data, and about how to enable portability of the data that you have the right to move. It is clear, however, that there are deep differences of opinion on this topic, and the reception of Facebook Import has been nothing even reomotely like the reception of our LinkedIn Import. So…

Where it stands at the moment: We are putting the Facebook Import project on indefinite hold, pending the outcome of our discussions with the folks over at Facebook.

But eager to see the debate continue over address book and friends list portability.

Ther recent imbroglio over internet celebrity Robert Scoble being banned from Facebook raises some long-overdue questions. It appears that Scoble used a beta version of a tool from Plaxo to extract his social graph from his Facebook account. Facebook’…

FB are not restricting the export of email addresses to protect your privacy, their Becon advertising systems abuses that data in far wider breath than the export could ever do. They are protecting themselves and their interests. Period.

It is the responsibility of the user to make sure they give out their email address to only those they trust. If you accepted or sent out a friend invite it is you that has decided to share your information. And it is you who is in control on how much information to share. The whole debate has raged on whether Plaxo or FB are in the wrong, but no one has questioned the user themselves. Where and when will the user accept the responsibility?

Let’s get this in perspective. I don’t belong to any social sites and yet many of my “real-world” friends have. And when they have, they have given out my email address to these companies and I regularly receive invitations to join the big sites. Should I be angry with the sites, or my friends for sharing my email address?

Of course I am a little smart and as such only trustworthy friends receive my real email address, and those I don’t wholly trust with the information are given an email address that can be replaced easily if it gets on a spam list. But the point is, I gave them the information and they are free to contact me using that address and phone number. If I wasn’t happy for them to do so then I wouldn’t give them the details or they wouldn’t be my friends. But on social sites it seems that people are willing to share all their data and then cry foul if it doesn’t suit them. Yet most people don’t even blink and think about the value of the data and how it is/will be used by the most powerful company - the social-site they become members of.

The author of this article makes a big deal about privacy, so why does he require an email address to leave comment? I don’t know him, wanted to discuss with others and now I have had to leave an email address! Why?

How will it be used, stored and protected? Am I to take the honesty and word of the author to trust him/her without proof or prior relationship? Why?

I read one of Scoble’s tweet’s yesterday about how he was kicked off Facebook for running a script on Facebook.  My thought was how silly this was given Scoble’s influence and that if there was some sort of misunderstanding Facebook …

Once someone gets to see it, it’s out there and you can’t take it back. Ask anyone in a relationship who says something and then wanted to take it back. Facebook is building a business on a principle that you surrender any rights you have to information because you choose to use their free service.

So it’s ok in your book for Facebook to scrape other sites for information, use it in ways that the web operator and the user un-intended but god forbid someone chooses to exercise their rights to information.

Here is an item to ponder. If I gave you a business card, but the card has a disclaimer that you cannot mechanically or electronically reproduce it, do you have the right to drop it into your cardscan scanner to add it to your Outlook?

If you say I don’t have that right, do you think I have the right to transcribe that information myself into an outlook contact card by entering it at the keyboard (either myself, or by contracting services to enter my data for me).

Where does the line get drawn, or do I go back to drawing on the walls of my cave instead of the wall at Facebook. BTW get all those dammed anthropologist out of my cave, those drawings are (c) 10,000BC by ME .. Didn’t you understand the squiggle, dash, dash, and circle as my copyright symbol?

Seems to me that’s a fair result.