Who Owns Your Social Data? You Do, Sort of

Natalie 01-05-2008

When Facebook kicked blogger Robert Scoble off of Facebook Jan. 3, it revived the great debate over data portability. Who owns the data on a social network? You or the site?

Scoble himself during a videocast admitted he broke Facebook's terms of use agreement by using a Plaxo script to pull names and addresses from Facebook to sync with his Plaxo account. Those terms explicitly state users must not "harvest or collect e-mail addresses or other contact information of other users."

The mea culpa didn't matter. Hundreds of bloggers flamed Facebook or at least used the opportunity, not knowing at the time it was a case of an automated script thwarting an automated script, to emphasize the need to be able to pull data from Facebook and use it across multiple social networks.

The notion seems not only innocent enough but a no-brainer in an age when people want to make managing their information easier online; users don't want to have to repeatedly enter the same data from Facebook to LinkedIn to Plaxo, etc.

"The idea for people to move their social graph from one service to another is a fabulous benefit," Wikia co-founder Jimmy Wales told eWEEK Jan. 3. "To me, it's a benefit to customers. People should be very wary about services that are uptight about that kind of thing in an effort to lock you out of the customer."

The problem is that while the profile data may be yours and yours alone, your address book contains the names and e-mail addresses of your friends, family and business contacts.

There are obvious privacy issues with this, and this is the reason Facebook has offered for preventing sharing across sites.

It's the technical and philosophical equivalent of a social contract; you wouldn't share your hard-copy address book with a network of strangers, would you? It would be bad form. As the platform provider, Facebook is trying to avoid these risks.

Forrester Research analyst Jeremiah Owyang said the issue is a sticky one because according to the terms of use, Facebook owns the data, but many people detest that control.

"Robert is breaking the terms of service, but it's also unclear if he owns those e-mail addresses," Owyang told eWEEK Jan. 3. "People said, 'Yes, you can be my friend,' but they never said, 'Robert, you can take my e-mail address and use it elsewhere.' Some people might feel like that social contract was broken by Robert and Plaxo."

While it is the dicey nature of the social contract that has Facebook afraid to relinquish control, some vendors are taking the leap. Google created APIs in OpenSocial that let users share data across sites. Wales told eWEEK Wikia is very interested in joining OpenSocial.

Plaxo's Pulse service, the root of the script that triggered the Scoble banishment, aggregates contact information from multiple accounts, including Microsoft Hotmail, Yahoo Webmail and Gmail.

What troubles Plaxo Chief Platform Architect Joseph Smarr is that, like Plaxo, Facebook screen scrapes the same data from Gmail, Hotmail and other places "a zillion times a day," he said.

Like Wales, Smarr said letting people pull data from one site to another is an obvious benefit of the social Web today. Facebook chooses not to observe it.

"They've been particularly closed about letting their users access that they themselves enjoy great benefit from getting from other sites," Smarr told Eweek Jan. 3.

Regardless of how Wales, Smarr, Owyang and others may feel, the bottom line is that Facebook sets the terms of use. While CEO Mark Zuckerberg may call the data ours, Facebook still controls what you can and can't do with it, so is it really ours?

Nina

I didn't know that someone got banned from facebook. Well I'm only 2 days behind.

Again this is what people don't understand about all the social websites like Facebook and Myspace, you give up your rights on many of the sites. Although you really can't blame the websites, people don't read the sites nor ask questions. So what do you blame the website or the ignorance of the people. Myspace tells you they going to give your infomation and data to other people but yet still people get surprised when they do. You wouldn't give out your address and phone number and identifiable data to just anyone, but you will give it to a site that states in plane text that they will. I don't know what facebook but it looks as though they like to have a control of it. I may have to read up on their rules.

Dream

That's just the thing though. They don't care until its too late, kind of like people who smoke and then want to blame the cigarette companies for canger when they tell you on the box that it can and most likely will do it. Once you put it online you lose you rights to really complain about it since no one forced you to do any of it.

Hsoolien

This is one of those legal grey areas there will never be an agreed upon solution for. Facebook is right by it's whole "it's in the terms of agreement" (and by accepting those terms you have legally given Facebook the win), however as the person mentioned, it is your information you entered and nothing stops you manually entering it somehwere else.

This is very muhc like the issues surrounding Trillian. Trillian does not in any way break any laws, but all the IM services it supports (except if I recall correctly MSN) all dislike that it circumvents their ad cluttered bloat ware.

Jessica

That's the thing Hsooly, few people ever reads those terms of agreement, then they come around and bitch when someone gomes along and takes and uses thier stuff when it in the agreement that you give up those things when you sign up and use their services. They really only joining it becuase their friends join it and not knowing what they give up when they do.

Hsoolien

Not reading the terms, like not knowing the law does not excuse one from the responsibilies/agreements of it.

SiNXation

If you don't read the terms then its your own fault. Once you sign up you already agree to them. Wether its right or wrong. a legal or moral standpoint, you agree to them and when something happens then people want to complain, start sending ignorant messages and emails. Sometimes they may take pity on you and give in, but its not going to happen all the time and wont happen for very long.

Hsoolien

Agreed, if you accepte the terms of agreement (a requirment of signing up) and did not read it, it's your own fault at the quandry you're in.

SamiJo

well I have to basically agree with you all here, if you dont read the TOS then you are basically signing blindly and hoping for the best.

Now, if you do that and then complain...you are an idiot.

As for facebook being pissy about it, the article is right, facebook does allow people to use hotmail and other services to find friends on their site. If they are going ot do that but not let users use their list of friends on facebook to search for them on messangers or other sites then they should stop using it themselves. and even if they don't have something where you can pull emails or whatever...why can't users just go to the friends page and get their email and type it in manually? is that breaking a rule as well?

Sunisa

People don't think. Once you join another site you have to understand what your rights are. When you put your infomation on there, and your pics and whatever, make sure that the sites says nothing can happen to it or something of that nature. Most sites now say when you put your stuff online its now theirs or open to the public. Read people damn.

Hsoolien

But reading those pesky TOS's is time wasted you could be using to spam about how EMO your life is or how HOT your current toy, or time you could better use to find new ways to mangle English attempting to ride the edge of geek culture...

Dream

Hsooly is funny but yet he is oh so right on that. One person does it and then the sheep will follow.

Hypnotize

I know I'm guilty of messing up the language but on no where the level as so many others do to a level that you have to read a sentence over and over again just to get the idea of what they saying.

Hsoolien

I remember the short time that 7331 speech had some cred. Even back then I made fun of just how retarded it was.

Raven

I always hated when they started that. The only thing that mad the 7331 speech better then what people do now is that it was uniform. Everyone agreed on how it should be type, instead of now just everyone making up whatever keys their fingers hit.