Mike Arrington is Right, Facebook is Wrong
Mike Arrington and I had a sometimes violent disagreement on today's Gillmor Gang. — The reason we were arguing? Because we both were arguing different things. — Mike Arrington was arguing that Facebook was in the wrong …
Context & Ripple Effects
The dispute follows earlier criticism of Facebook and arrives as Facebook is expanding third-party access through Facebook Connect and Jabber-based chat access. The immediate fault line is who controls users’ profiles and data, a contest in which Facebook, Google and MySpace are all competing.
First-order effects
- Facebook faces a public challenge from Mike Arrington over its claim to control user profiles and the terms on which outside services can use them.
- Facebook Connect’s third-party API becomes more than a distribution feature: it is a test of whether Facebook can extend its network while retaining control of identity data.
Second-order effects
- Google and MySpace are pressured to distinguish their own profile and data-control policies as competition shifts from attracting users to governing the identities users bring across services.
Third-order effects
- If social networks keep opening APIs while retaining control of profile data, interoperability will be defined by platform owners’ terms rather than by user portability.
The trend: Social-network competition is moving beyond audience scale toward control of the identity and profile data that connects users to outside services.