Are Google’s Friend Connect, Myspace’s Data Availability and Facebook Connect just Spam 2.0?
Just because I am friends with you at work, doesn’t mean I want you to come to dinner with my friends from university. Just because I am friends with you on Facebook, doesn’t mean I want to be your friend on Dogster …
Connections between people are given meaning by their social context. The connection per se is devoid of meaning. This case has been eloquently made by Jyri Zengestrom in his discussion of social objects. To paraphrase his argument, social networks are effective when they bring people together around a shared object, e.g. in Dogster this could be the like of a specific breed, in HMV’s Get Closer it could be a shared experience at a gig. Social networks are less effective when the shared object is weak or absent – which explains at least to me why networking sites, such as Linkedin, Viadeo or Xing, feel quite sterile.
What has all of this got to do with the rash of recent announcements from Google, Myspace and Facebook regarding ‘portability’ of social network profile data? Well, for starters, the commentary thereon has been largely focused on whether these announcements constitute a new reign of openness in social networking or a continuation by other means of a walled garden strategy – Dare Obasanjo and Marc Canter’s posts are good reads here. However, I believe its necessary to evaluate these moves by Google, Myspace and Facebook on terms broader than data ownership (is it our data or their data?).
A more fundamental question is whether the profile data contained in one social networking site can be ported in a meaningful way to another? Of course I could take my basic profile information anywhere (and mechanisms to make this easy are to be welcomed!), but the richness of a social networking site is determined by what’s been invested in the shared objects between linked individuals. So whilst I could take my photos with me from Facebook and expose them on any site I chose to, what will happen to the tags, comments and associations that bring them meaning? Will this meaning be carried over to other sites? Also on the question of data ownership … the photo is mine, but is it still just mine when it functions as a shared object? Will the friends who tagged the photo and commented on it be happy for me to share this data with other networks of people?
My gut feel on these questions is that the answer will often be no. Rich profile data can’t necessarily be moved from site to another and retain meaning. The connections created in one site around shared objects may not be sustainable if those objects are not present on the new site.
And that makes me think that in the worst case scenario Google’s Friend Connect, Myspace’s Data Availability and Facebook Connect might herald the Web 2.0 version of spam as we indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages to our ‘friends’ about things they know little of and care less about.
Posted by Ivan Croxford on May 19, 2008
Tags: Facebook Connect, Google Friends Connect, Myspace Data Availability
I’m a digital strategist and I like building new businesses. This blog is an opportunity for me to air some of the insights, issues and themes that I come across in the course of my work. I’d love for some/any of these to be picked up as part of the broader conversation on digital disruption.
Hi Ivan, nice post,
This is a theme that’s been intriguing me recently too – especially the link between communication and commodification. Are we encouraged to “use” our “friends”/contacts just so that a social networking site may profit? For example, do I want my circle of friends, and the communication within it, to be dictated by Facebook apps?
The problem with web 2.0, as I see it, is that the money comes from 2 things:
Firstly, “capturing” those social things we do anyway, such as sharing photos, or just idle chatting (see SMS, IM, Twitter, etc). This is good, but suffers from two problems – 1) anyone can do it, so it’s difficult to make cash from it, and 2) it’s difficult to “grow”, because people are generally quite happy with how much they communicate with their friends, thanks.
The second problem leads on from this, and comes out of the two problems above. A capitalist view on commodifying communications then leads to: 1) “novel” ways of, or activities for, communicating. This is the “USP” side of business. 2) a lust for just more communication generally. The end result is that we end up with more *quantity* of communication, but less *quality*. So I totally agree with your idea that the new model of communications is based on spamming your friends. Yay.
Maybe making money in web2.0 is difficult because, actually, we don’t *need* to communicate with each other in greater quantities. Maybe we have enough communication. Certainly, the increase in communication needed to sustain companies trying to make cash off it is well above the increase we’re actually seeing. (Novelty creates interest, which creates page impressions, but ultimately novelty is an unsustainable business model.)
Seeing the communications that we desire, but currently lack, is very difficult. Finding a solution is often pot-luck, it seems to me.
- Scribe
p.s. Sorry for any offense caused by calling you the “tech/sales guy” too – banging out blog posts too quickly brings out all the over-generalisations in me
Hi Scribe
I like being the tech/sales guy – no worries about that
Very interesting reflections, particularly the perspective on how in Web 2.0 users and site owners could be linked together in a fairly Faustian bargain to grow usage at the expense of the quality of their connections. There’s definitely something in that explains some of the issues in making money out of sites that we (users and site owners) have created. One to mull on …
Thanks for the comment and hope all goes well in Brighton.
Ivan