MySpace used to be notorious for simply banning third party widgets that didn’t play nice (”not playing nice” generally meant any kind of advertisements in the widgets, but it was very arbitrary). Those days are long gone. Maybe now, though, Facebook is having a go at it.
Until now Facebook combated black hat applications by just tightening up the rules to shut down loopholes. The problem with that approach is that it tends to reward bad behavior, since the only downside is that it’ll be stopped at some point and your competitors won’t have the same ability to spam that you did. A race to the bottom ensued. And Slide and RockYou tended to be among the worst offenders.
Tonight though that may have changed. A hugely popular Slide application called Top Friends (review here) has simply vanished from Facebook’s site. Users who had installed it don’t see it, searches for it in the directory turn up empty, and the URL for the application now redirects to the Facebook home page. It’s like it never existed.
So what happened? We won’t know until morning. But this isn’t just a broken application, since the app page is redirecting to Facebook.com.
Update: It looks like CNET has the answer - Top Friends has a security hole that allowed people to view partial profiles of people who were not their friends, and Facebook suspended them. I’d say it’s safe to say Slide is hard at work on a fix.
Until Facebook suspended the Top Friends app, created by Slide, anyone could browse partial profiles of anyone else on Facebook who had added Top Friends to their page. CNET News.com confirmed that the security hole exposed the birthdays, gender, and relationship status of strangers, including Facebook executives, the wife of Google co-founder Larry Page, and one profile that seemed to belong to Paris Hilton. Basically, the app was not obeying the privacy settings specified by the user, enabling anyone with the know-how to bypass the security once they obtained someone’s Facebook ID number.
…and suddenly Slide’s valuation goes from half a billion to half a million.
For the nostalgic, here’s the Google cached version. http://64.233.169.104/search?q.....=firefox-a
The promo link on Slide.com for sending drinks to your top friends also goes to Human Pets (http://apps.facebook.com/topeight/?mystuff=1&sub=gifts&prev=mystuff)
I’m going to go with accident… seems a lot more reasonable than malicious action from facebook.
It seems that someone quickly overtook the application’s canvas URL in an attempt to divert traffic to their own Facebook application as well.
http://apps.facebook.com/topeight/ was the Top Friends canvas URL, and now all it contains is an ad for Human Pets.
Interesting to note: this is the 3rd largest application on Facebook. Adonomics.com reports it at a $24MM valuation and it has 32MM installs! (Don’t worry, they still have all of that juicy data on you regardless stored on some database.)
I wonder how this will impact the widget industry as a whole though (assuming this isn’t an “accident”) - I’m sure that Slide will still manage to do well overall though.
This link is pretty funny too: http://www.facebook.com/apps/a.....8429735830
Not sure what the story is here mike. But it also vanished from my page within the last 2 hours also.
It is also no longer listed in the application directory. This appears that they were shut down for some reason.
We will find out soon enough i am sure.
Isn’t Slide’s founder a partner at the FF, and doesn’t Peter sit on FB’s board? Weren’t Max and Peter both founders of paypal?
Does not compute.
I just started using Facebook a few days ago Ive been a loyal myspacer for the last few years,hopefully facebook will be better then myspaces slow load time.
http://www.crunchnow.com
Let’s hope this was intentional and is a first step to punish Slide, RockYou and the likes. Facebook sucks since they came along.
This can be easily undone by facebook, but slide wont be able to get their hijacked app canvas page url.
Mwuhahaha, the suckers.
Second paragraph, last line.
“And Slide and RockYou tended to me among the worst offenders.”
Sorry, but shouldn’t that ‘me’ be a ‘be’?
If not, my apologies. =)
topfriends shutoff
Excellent… this sort of crap almost made FB unbearable…
It looks like it might have been a security hole issue according to cnet.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9977762-7.html
As in all those previous cases, we will soon see a comment from Facebook here that “a software developer just made a little mistake”.
Like #7 (Tim) I don’t think Peter Thiel would accept FB and Slide fighting this out in the middle of the night.
How about hacking? See #4
Excellent reporting on Cnet
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9977762-7.html
facebook disabled my profile with no prior warning. facebook need to stop it’s bulldog attitude and show it’s users and affiliates some respect!
Facebook has affiliates? I do not think money-hungry Desi’s that spam the crap out of others should have accounts either.
Slide has been trying to build their own “facebook” community/site on the back of facebook….about time something happened.
Doesn’t matter though — Slide has mined all the connection data and email addresses. Once you get tired of the Facebook spam….just come on over to Slide….we’re open across all networks…these are the same folks that mined eBay for their transactors at Paypal….if anything Facebook is late to the game on understanding that.
It’s business by Slide and it’s good…..Facebook’s just late….
I’ve noticed this group…
http://www.facebook.com/group......amp;ref=mf
You guys are great!
First indirectly accuse Facebook of banning applications arbitrarily, fueling suspicions of a mystery. Then you find out that actually, the application has been blocked to avoid very sensible data being exposed without the consent of the users. And that is it, end of the story.
You accuse based on guesses, create the rumour, then when thanks to somebody else you find the reason, link to it, and your duty of informing is fulfilled. No need to apologise. You do not see any reason for that.
But the money keeps rolling, and that is the main objective.
it’s a wonder something like this didn’t happen any sooner.. Security holes are likely to be very present given the number of widgets and developers just racing to get them on facebook.
Wow, absolutely insane.
At first I was sad to see this app go. THEN I checked out CNET.
I think I’m going to be changing the way I use applications a LOT after this, as well as changing how much info I have on my page to begin with. Sucks, now I don’t even want it to show my school’s network.
facebook business model is same as microsofts:
somebody introduces feature a
feature a catches on
facebook copies feature a & incorporates into their own system
feature a homeless
@ 1 Arona - LOL!
HUGE yawn. man is this just such useless news, no offense michael. can’t wait till useful FB apps actually start to surface. then perhaps i’ll use it again…
So far, the only people happy are all the developers slide has stepped all over on.
http://forum.developers.facebo.....582#p83582
You hit the nail on the head - Slide gets away with breaking a rule, then as soon as we try the same thing to be able to stand a fighting chance, the rules get changed and everyone gets punished in the end.
Myspace also suspended Slide’s top friends app for 24 hours last week. They were caught breaking myspaces anti spamming TOS rules. I wish these social networks would grow a backbone and ban slide for good.
Until they remove these programs, your just opening up your self to hostile spam and trojan attacks by third party hackers and software. This brings back memories of third party apps on facebook that you couldnt access unless you share them with your friends.
gosh michael
im getting a little annoyed w/ u
the least u can do is say ur sorry for wrongfully accusing facebook
ur the head of a blog that gives articles-like a newspaper does
dont give your opinion of what happened
learn the facts
then report it
and when your wrong
please say your sry-newspapers even do that (and u know how we all hate those damn reporters that get in our way)
@really: Your right. Like the article says, slide and rockyou were the first, they came, they ruined the experience for the users, and then new rules were slapped on all the other developers. They got the head start, and then they had a giant massive brick wall put up right behind them so noone else can get where they are.
good! hope that garbage never resurfaces again and just disappears from existence.
@Tim - Good point! These guys are all connected.
Seems to me like FB is flexing some muscle… but Slide seems to be laughing all the way to the bank. http://www.slide.com/advertise
While FB struggles to keep order in the ranks of its exec’s (Matt, Owen) and to figure out a way make money… Slide has all the engaged users and a great way for advertisers to access the core of FB. Y’know. Maybe we’ve seen this story before on TC… um, PhotoBucket/MySpace anyone?
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007.....backstory/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007.....0-million/
I have an application called GridView. It’s very similar to Top Friends. Plus very large changes coming in a week or two.
I have been wondering what happened to the Fortune Cookie application and the My Questions application. Both have vanished without a trace.