Robert Scoble - Jan 4, 2008
Why is it OK for Facebook to import your contacts from Gmail but it isn’t OK for it to export back out to Gmail?
Because when you get details from a friend you’re asking them directly, whereas with Facebook they gave the information the site, not specifically to you. From a legal point of view collecting that information without permission from the user would go against people’s ethical standards.
This is a response to a post on Segala: Scoble opens up debate about walled gardens after being booted by Facebook. There are two key factors to take into account. The first of these is the issue of privacy and the second is the free flow of information. Unlike most other sites facebook is both hated and detested by different groups of users. As a recent university graduate and member of the international community it’s a great way to keep up with what my friends are doing without having to make hundreds of five second phone calls.
plasticsnow - Dec 1, 2007
Was that mine? A bunch of snowboarders and then people I’ve met randomly who are completely unconnected :o)
Whilst looking at another person’s Facebook profile I noticed something. Two thirds of the people were connected to each other yet one third had no connections. It made me think about the nature of the friendship wheel and how it demonstrates how you use facebook. If you use facebook for real world friends and connections then the friend wheel will show that the connections are many and diverse. Everyone knows everyone else and there is a real sense of community.
Facebook was a great idea. It was great because it was an online method by which to meet people within your network and to get to know them before you drop by the bar. It was especially good for those who are shy. As more people started using it though something bad happened. Mid and late adopters started using the website. In itself this is a great thing because it means that you can find man friends and communicate with them.
Loudmouthman, amongst others was expressing his desire for a means by which to aggregate all our online data through one central account. I though of Freebase and Openid and how they could work. Google though had other thoughts. Whilst Facebook behaves like a portal opensocial helps agggregate content. Facebook assumes thatyou come to their website, spen an hour there and then disconnect. Opensocial assumes that you are an active participant of the new socialmedia landscape on several websites at a time.
Today’s news is as follows. Having seen that Bill Palmer of the Iprong podcast and website would add the 300th friend on Facebook I decided I would take this opportunity to add him. His podcast is “for the ipod generation so take the time to listen to it. It’s mainly about iphones and ipods but mixes in quite a few artists in the process. The second event was becoming the 3000th person to use twittermail.
The Friend density map is an interesting one. It shows you where the highest concentration of your friends is. It’s a good idea when you’ve got friends spread around the world as we do. It’s a shame it’s limited only to the US at the moment. I can only see six percent of my friends this way.
I sent a quick message to the creator of the API and I hope he resolves this issue in the near future.
According to a recent article in the Times England is top EU country for social networking with 5.6 hrs a month spent on social networking websites such as Facebook:
Britons are the ‘social networking’ champions of Europe, displaying a far greater appetite for websites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo than fellow citizens on the continent.
British internet users spent an average of 5.8 hours a month - about a 11 minutes a day - on such sites, in comparison with their nearest rivals the Germans, who spent 3.
A few months ago I filmed the Silent Disco in Paddington station, one of London’s main train stations. As a result of the coverage of the event many people were happy to see it. With the footage I have recently filmed of the events that took place on the 6th of October I am once again getting a lot of that appreciation through facebook comments. It feels good and I need to find more events to cover that will get this type of response.