Facebook and Plaxo with Scoble in the middle
It was only a matter of time before Facebook and Plaxo started arguing more publicly. Robert Scoble presented this opportunity when he contracted with Plaxo to have them test his social graph. He allowed Plaxo to run a small automated script on his Facebook account that scrapped the contact information of his social graph (his network of friends) and import that information into a Plaxo service. The only problem - it is prohibited to run scripts like that on Facebook. So Facebook disabled his account which probably wasn't the smartest thing to do as Scoble is extremely influential in the blogosphere. Check out this Facebook Group and this News.com article for more on the issue. My take - Plaxo is trying every way they can to get more users to switch to their service by encouraging its members to import their Facebook social graphs. Do users own their social graphs is the key question. Personally, I don't want anyone automatically porting my contact information into another social network. When I friend someone on Facebook or another service, I see that friending as context specific. I don't expect that friending to carry through to anywhere else without my permission. The smaller social networks may not like this and arguably it isn't open but its my data after all and does not belong to the friend who I have friended. Do you agree?
Facebook restored Scoble's account on the condition that he did not run those scripts again. Plaxo may not launch the new feature that allows users to import their Facebook Social Graph into Plaxo Pulse and everybody seems to be quite happy now.
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