Facebook blocks Google’s Friend Connect
In a surprise move, Facebook decided to block Google’s Friend Connect service announced just a few days ago. Google’s Friend connect came on the heels of Facebook Connect announced on May 9, 2008. This is a major blow to Google’s Friend connect initiative that is attempting to provide an common social API to the popular social networks.
Facebook issued a statement reagrding Google’s Friend Connect in their blog saying - We’ve found that it redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users’ knowledge, which doesn’t respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our Terms of Service. Just as we’ve been forced to do for other applications that redistribute data in a way users might not expect or understand, we’ve had to suspend Friend Connect’s access to Facebook user information until it comes into compliance. We’ve reached out to Google several times about this issue, and hope to work with them to enable users to share their data exactly when and where they choose.
Users are voicing the need for data portability among social networks as the number of social networks has grown with several popular networks like Facebook, myspace, Hi5, LinkedIn etc. Google, Facebook and Plaxo recently announced their support for the data portability project. This puts a damper to an much needed commitment on the part of social network operators to work together in making data portability a successful initiative.
