Social.im: The Instant Messaging Service For Facebook Junkies
If you don't mind installing one more instant messaging client on your computer, and you happen to be a heavy Facebook user, check out social.im. This isn't yet another instant messaging application that resides on Facebook …
Context & Ripple Effects
This lands mid-crisis in Facebook's stance on who may touch its data. On January 3, 2008 it disabled a user's account under its Terms of Use, drew public criticism from Robert Scoble over the resulting data-access fight on January 7, and then joined the DataPortability Workgroup alongside Google and Plaxo on January 8 — formally endorsing the idea that user data should move between services.
Against that backdrop, Social.im's launch of a desktop IM client built around Facebook accounts is a direct test of the new posture: it consumes Facebook's social graph entirely off-site, the exact kind of third-party access Facebook had been policing days earlier. It matters because the news feed's pull already keeps users on-site; a client like this tries to make Facebook's graph useful without the site.
First-order effects
- Heavy Facebook users get a persistent desktop client that carries their Facebook identity and contacts outside the browser, adding another install to the multi-client IM setup the article assumes.
- Facebook now faces continuous, automated consumption of its social graph from an external application — precisely the behavior pattern its Terms-of-Use enforcement was built to police.
Second-order effects
- Facebook's week-old DataPortability commitment collides with its enforcement instincts: tolerating Social.im validates the open-access position it just signed onto, while blocking it hands ammunition to critics like Scoble and to rivals such as Plaxo and FriendFeed, which the coverage notes benefit as user activity spreads across many sites.
- Other client makers watching the outcome get a free read on whether wrapping a major social network's graph is viable, shaping where they point their own desktop efforts.
Third-order effects
- If portability holds, the client layer starts to detach from the network layer: messaging becomes a surface through which social graphs are accessed, and networks compete on the richness of their data feeds rather than on owning the interface.
- That shift would push platform owners toward formalized access rules — APIs, terms, and partnerships replacing ad-hoc account suspensions as the mechanism controlling who may build on a social graph.
The trend: Third-party clients are racing to wrap proprietary social graphs ahead of the owners deciding whether data portability becomes policy or punishment.