Facebook’s ties to Microsoft go back to 2006 when they first signed an advertising deal. A year later they took a $240 million investment, and the advertising relationship was extended this year.
Those ties may explain why Facebook was willing to ignore its own privacy policy in March 2008 and give Microsoft access to Facebook user emails. Despite shutting down Plaxo and Google products that tried to access Facebook users over privacy concerns, they were ok with sending and displaying emails to Microsoft to let users invite Facebook friends to Windows Live Messenger.
Facebook’s privacy policy says “We do not provide contact information to third party marketers without your permission. We share your information with third parties only in limited circumstances where we believe such sharing is 1) reasonably necessary to offer the service, 2) legally required or, 3) permitted by you.”
But Microsoft’s Invite2Messenger appears to violate that policy. Messenger users are asked to log in to Facebook, and then the names and email addresses of all that user’s Facebook friends are then sent to Microsoft and displayed in clear text on a page they control (Facebook itself only shows friend’s emails as images to prevent scraping). You check off which friends you want to invite to use Messenger, and then Microsoft sends each of them an email to install the client and become friends with you. Screenshots of the process (with emails removed) are below.
When Microsoft announced Invite2Messenger they said that LinkedIn, Bebo, Hi5 and Tagged would participate, but none of those partners ever went live. Just Facebook. Another oddity - on a UK MSN site, Microsoft even noted that Robert Scoble was banned for doing exactly what Microsoft is now doing with Facebook’s apparent blessing.
As far as I can tell, Facebook has never allowed this with any other partner. And as I wrote above, they’ve shut down both Plaxo and Google for similar actions.
Why does Microsoft want these social connections imported into Messenger? Does it have anything to do with Microsoft’s surprise launch yesterday of the new Live.com social network, which pre-populates friends based on Messenger connections? From people we’ve talked to, the launch came as a complete surprise to everyone, including Facebook.
For months Microsoft has urged users to effectively import their Facebook social graph into Messenger, with Facebook’s consent, even though it appears to clearly violate the Facebook Privacy Policy. Then Microsoft launches a surprise social network based on Messenger contacts.
There’s a lot more to this story as well. Why did Facebook allow this in the first place (in other words, what did they get out of it)? We’ll update soon.
See all
Post
Lets get ready to rumble……
Everybody wants in on the action.
Best,
Mike
http://www.wannadevelop.com
This could be a part of embrace, extend and extinguish thing they are famous for?
—
New Site for College Students: http://www.inkampus.com
Sign up for the next generation of social networking for College students. We go live in december!
-
http://www.socialsynapse.com
I just walked through the process at Invite2Messenger.com it doesn’t show the email addresses anywhere just the names of all your contacts. I can only guess they just made this change.
Not sure when the change was made, but I’m fairly sure it wasn’t today.
Considering Microsoft’s Invite2Messenger just another FaceBook app it may prove no problem on privacy…?
Why doesn’t MS just buy the over valued people directory that is facebook, for a good 2 billion or so.
I mean they are 5+ years in and can’t monetize (so chances are they never will by now). MS wont care about facebook as an actual stand alone business, and it seems that without MS’s charity facebook would barely revenue over 150 million (they may have actually shut don’t by now if not for MS).
MS could tie Facebook into their office suit, browser, desktop and their cloud initiative and Facebook VCs will have a nice respectable exit. It is a win win. Plus MS can better compete with Google.
By now I believe it is more than obvious that Facebook is not the next google type of silicon success story (but as a people directory it does the job intended, kind of like a nice global yellow pages), so why turn it into a disaster, since operationally it is not a viable business.
Sell it, create a nice PR win scenario and keep the valley’s confidence up.
You are an idiot. I hope (for your sake) someone has already told you that.
Manish…you are an idiot for an idiot reply. Can you a least reply intelligently to an intelligent comment. Only an idiot replies like that.
Sure, we all know how _so_intelligent_ you are. Spare us the bull sh!t please.
The reply was for the highly intelligent Manish.
tard fight
>>Why doesn’t MS just buy the over valued people directory that is facebook, for a good 2 billion or so. <<
My guess is that MS tried to buy the 98.4% of Facebook it does not already own recently and Facebook refused. Ballmer possesses the subtly of Attila the Hun. My guess is that after Facebook rejected it’s offer, Ballmer set MS on attack mode against Facebook.
Facebook got played. They’re out of their league. The conservatives underestimated obama, and facebook underestimated Balmer.
Oh Balmer!?
Nice pun!
MS may have harvested a good many of Facebook’s users, maybe Facebook will wake up and see that MS aren’t anyone’s ‘friends’ and will take you for all they can given half the chance.
MS is trying to be smarty here
actually it is possible to build a social network using healthy relations with your msn messenger contacts, but I dont think MS can get the social network thing right, remember msn spaces?
BTW, just logged into invite2messenger thing and it worked fine, I invide 48 contacts to my messenger.
this is outrageous and not right.
Gregg
thefacebookfan.com
why?
Yeah. Why?
Update: The tool does still work, although not for me (likely because I have too many connections). I made changes to the post to reflect this.
yeah its working with me too
And just who would be surprised at Microsoft behaving like this? They have a long history of trampling on ‘partners’ and users.
I don’t see a MS problem here, I see a FB problem.
Good old MS.I fuckin love them!
Purely theoretically, with MS being an inverstor in FB (a co-owner) … are they still considered as a 3rd party?
yes.
“A complete surprise to everyone including Facebook”
Microsoft attacking your business model is a shock - it is what they do. Wake the fuck up. At some point in the next 5 years Microsoft will own either Yahoo, Facebook or both.
By the way, I had to use a Windows XP system yesterday - PAINFUL. If Vista is said to be worst off than XP no wonder Apple and Linux are doing so well.
I’ve been testing a vista machine today to try a few things out. I still like that OS, although the boot time is just absurd.
I must think differently - 10 years of Linux, Debian up to official release of 3 then day one onward with Ubuntu, then OS-X starting with the Airbook.
Whenever I use Windows whatever(tm)
it feels clunky and confusing. Like the AOL of operating systems - hrm, MSAOLOS - now that’s an idea worth considering.
Gotta run. Time to volunteer my humor somewhere else.
cheers,
macewan
How long does Vista take to boot? Shouldn’t be more than 40 seconds. Now, resume from standby time - that takes forever. Bloody graphics card drivers (desktop is ready before you can see anything).
Robert MacEwan in his little girl’s voice:
“Oooh, look at me. I only use linux and osx - on my airbook of course. Omg, I’m so special, me and my linux since 1998, that’s 10 years! Windoze sux, lol, my mac rocks, totally!”
MS bashing - again? Tsstststs. However, Michael is right. It’s definitely Facebook’s problem… there is no privacy at all if something like this is possible. That’s a growing concern for all users. At least it should be.
Sorry but it’s the white elephant poo in the room that everyone smells. It is a valid point in this discussion.
Why would anyone be surprised that yet another company has been partnered and left hung out to dry by Microsoft? If companies allow themselves to be taken advantage of Microsoft they deserve what they get. To the person who asked, “Why doesn’t Microsoft just buy them?”, why the fuck would MS buy them when they can simply steal their customers?
u r having some old data it also supports windows live hotmail.
I prefer avoid to be on facebook
man, shut up with the MS hate. 90% of the world uses there product - “linux, ubuntu, apple” WTF whatever. get a grip “apple are going to take over the world” - hardly
MS release silverlight as a critical release for Vista and as a standard component of MS 7 and all of sudden flash aint so cool
get over your consistent bagging of MS.
Microsoft is evil - if Facebook didn’t know that going in, they deserve being smashed by the Redmond monster
ps mike - seriously - do you think these companies would be so dumb as to risk another anti-trust or privacy lawsuit ?
sometimes TC really “looks into” things too much.
already there are “import social network contact” scripts. dont get how this is different.
aka http://www.octazen.com/product_is.php
Its on every site…I guess everyone is busy bashing MS thye ignore the truth. and they still keep growing bigger. Geta handle on reality guys - they have a pretty good business model and very good products.
this is very much different. the user only gives his credentials to fb, not to invite2messenger.net. it removes the risk of identity fraud that is very high with all the screen-scraping scripts out there.
I call Shenanigans! Everybody get your broom.
Anyone who is doltish enough to put any information on any social network deserves to have it abused by Microsoft and other organized crime rings.
MSFT, as it planned in the beginning, will gut Facebook, take its customer base through integration of the customers’ networks and directories into the OS or Live.com.
MSFT will loudly announce they are abandoning the Facebook partnership. Facebook will collapse.
Tcruncher2:
Methinks the lady protest too much.
Everything Robert said is true…..
M$ has a long record of suck. And he didnt say anything about ‘taking over the world’, he said ‘no wonder they are doing so well.’ Tone your M$ fanboy rhetoric down
EXUSE ME PEOPLE, BUT FACEBOOK IS DOING EXACTLY SAME THING when you sing in with HOTMAIL.COM (and probably LIVE) account. IT WAS AUTOMATICALY ENLISTING ALL MY CONTACTS FROM MSN MESSENGER
HOW IS THAT DIFERENT OR BETTER THEN THIS WHAT MICROSOFT DID?
phil is right. this just levels the playing field. What happens when you join fb? you are prompted to import your email contacts. fb screen-scraped which is just a terrible practice–it invites user to hand over their secret credentials, and increases the propensity for identity fraud, phishing, etc. also, there was no structure around what fb did with your credentials or the data they sucked in.
ultimately, this is a HUGE WIN FOR THE USER. data can now flow out of fb–including email addresses–and APIs and authentication are used to avoid screen-scraping and give users more security and control.
This is called the password anti-pattern.. developers who do this need to be shot.
when is the next purchasing generation of 13 yr olds going to come along with a new favourite social networking site to capture the venture capital wanderlust?
Now, that’s funny! …The sad thing is it really really might go down like that. Just put it on a Cereal Box for the next 5 years and it will catch!
If it was part of the terms that were to the funding Microsoft received from Facebook then it would be legally required.
Detective Mike,
We are waiting for the second part of the story
We praise OpenID, OAuth, OpenSocial, etc. because everyone wants their data to be portable across social platforms - what seems to be the problem? I mean, sure the wording is open for debate, but we all know the goal of social networks: to maximize their user base, which means pulling folks from other platforms without having to recreate their social network over and over again. I’m working on similar features.
http://www.madtownlounge.com
Allen
Can yall just stfu with the Microsoft is evil crap; All for profit businesses are evil because you can’t stay in business being the good guy plain and simple. I welcome anyone to name a fortune 500 company that is not evil.
Interesting how facebook is not working right now for many people. Does this have to do anything with it??
Developers, developers, developers?????
Facebook cash-in-my-pocket-talks-louder-than-any-freakin’-privacy-policy????
Facebook is MSFT bitch. They’ll bent over and show their G-string every time Balmer asks them to.
Facebook really pisses me off. Why is it ok for them to hack our address books from mutliple places in order to invite friends to their site but they site “privacy” concerns if we try to pull our own data from theirs from somewhere else? Does anybody else smell the bullshit here besides me? If it comes to light that Facebook has been selling our data off to MS it could very easily spell the end for them. Wouldn’t that be some shit for people who are so concerned about privacy. LOL.
Darn, its not working anymore … I was hoping I could spam my 3000+ friends easily
i saw Your
VeriSign = (cosa nostra(electronic warfare center BUKARESTI)) advertisement.
Don’t think this is an abuse, I guess at some point in the flow YOU granted Microsoft access to your facebook contacts?
Microsoft is facebook’s most powerful potential competitor, far more than MySpace, which has marginalized itself in true social networking by becoming a media company.
I maintain a blog on facebook now on a facebook page and have just posted at length on this:
http://www.new.facebook.com/th.....0038890204
I wonder if Microsoft is now turning its sights on a facebook acquisition now that yahoo is off the table. There are some definite synergies that would justify such an action.
1) Mark Zuckerberg definitely sees himself as more in the Bill Gates mold vs. Sergey Brin.
2) Facebook has clear anti-google sentiment built into its culture as does Microsoft.
3) In Microsoft’s footsteps, Facebook is positioning itself as the Internet Platform of choice vs. just another internet destination.
Maybe now that yahoo is out of the picture, Facebook will become Microsoft’s next great conquest. I could see it happening!!
Boris
http://www.thewebwar.com/facebook
http://www.thewebwar.com/microsoft
zuckerberg reminds me more of jerry yang he would rather let the ship sinked then sell. i dont think he cares about the money but more the prestige of being “I’M CEO BITCH”
Ridiculous!! win-doze is nothing new but Facebook going back to old fashion, damn!!
I would love to hear more of this..
Hey Mike-
There are a few inaccuracies in your article that I’d like to address. As you know, Facebook is working towards more openness and sharing across the web, and we agree that user consent is an important part of that. It’s even mentioned explicitly in the privacy policy excerpt you posted.
User permission IS required to share any data from Facebook to Microsoft Live Messenger. In fact, the user is prompted to select their Facebook friends to invite. The other instances you mention where we have prevented services from obtaining data from Facebook were different. In those cases, unauthorized scripts were deployed on Facebook that scraped user data. That is exactly the kind of security problem we will always act quickly to resolve.
Also, I’m not sure your screenshots show an accurate flow of the product. When I recreated it just now to test your claims, not a single email address was shown for my friends on Facebook. Perhaps this was a temporary bug, but it shouldn’t happen again. Give it a try.
As you know from our many conversations, we continue to explore ways to open up Facebook in safe and secure ways that benefit our users. Facebook Connect is one of our biggest initiatives in this area and we are testing in beta with many sites, including Techcrunch. We will also continue to work with Microsoft, a trusted partner, and others to test various data portability initiatives. This includes exploring how Facebook products may integrate, with user permission, to Microsoft’s new Live.com.
Data portability must not result in a data free-for-all, otherwise trust in the overall system will be diminished. To this end, we’re taking things slowly, testing what works and what doesn’t, all with a focus on giving users the controls they need.
Let us know if you want to discuss any of this in more detail. We’re willing to talk when given a fair opportunity, and we’d always prefer to clear up confusion before you publish, not after.
Thanks,
Chris Kelly/Chief Privacy Officer/Facebook
Glad someone set the record straight.
Everybody has their price, I guess.. Microsoft has just found Facebook’s.
I like how Chris Kelly (FB) says “… Perhaps this was a temporary bug, but it shouldn’t happen again.” .
As in, “oh shit! we screwed up. We’ve fixed the ‘bug’ now.”
Saying you screwed up is hard, isn’t it, Chris? Or are you worried about privacy lawsuits?
screw microsoft.. I will not use their live messenger products until they adopt xmpp.
Well I think Live messenger is based on SIP protocol which is again a standard I am sure you know other goody things of SIP.
all questions answered:
http://techland.blogs.fortune......er-softie/
Just another FaceBook app. what’s the big deal?
my comments at http://www.commentino.com/orim
The data sharing with M$ has just started. The profiles aren’t easy to make money on, however FB Connect code is going to collect every search referrer URL from every Connect partner site and use it to target M$ Live Search and other ads any number of places. At Lookery we know, because we’ve been busy building a similar system for the past year.
Nice, and very curious relationship
Don’t be too nervous about Facebook.
There’s an important point here that people aren’t mentioning. This is a reciprocal agreement - FB users can aso pull Messenger contacts into FB. Given there’s lots more Messenger users than FB users this seems like a win for Facebook to me.
Companies partner together for mutual gain all the time so I don’t see what the issue is here.
Sign up for the beta launch of a new College Social Networking website. http://www.socialsynapse.com
ok
Well, it is certainly interesting with Facebook Connect (which is available on TechCrunch) soon to overtake Open ID.