Unlike yesterday, TechCrunch has a good summary of Facebook's announcement of new privacy features, which took place at their headquarters today. Also, Facebook is launching an internal chat function, which is in-browser and useless because it doesn't allow third party development or API access. Walled garden blah blah.
What I want to mention is the privacy controls. Basically, what Facebook has done is allowed you to whitelist different people for different kinds of data, so your work friends can't see your drunk college spring break photos. You can also be someone's "friend" and decide what info to give them, etc etc. Your ex can be your friend but he can't have your new address. Stuff like that.
Facebook's Chief Privacy Officer (wtf kind of title is that, anyway?) Chris Kelly took a few questions, and noted that by using Facebook you consent to letting them possibly use your profile and image to promote the site. I assume it's in the TOS.
This brings us back to the 300lb Facebook Gorilla in the room: who owns your data?
Robert Scoble tried to find out a few months ago and famously found himself kicked off Facebook. When he asked founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg about it last week, he got a weak non-answer about preventing spam and an "appeals process" which, since he is Robert Scoble, was unneccessary.
Some background: Robert wanted to put his Facebook contacts into his Outlook address book. Facebook allows you to import your contacts to make them your "friends" using the ubiquitous CSV format, but does not allow you to spit that same data back out.
See, that's funny, because when I joined Facebook in 2004, that was an easy thing to do. I even exported my friends into my Apple address book. I know because an archived version still has some that didn't list their phone numbers, just their "@wisc.edu" email addresses.
Sometime in 2005, that feature disappeared, and has been gone ever since.
I asked Mark Zuckerberg a question at the Developers' Garage event, but not that one. I'll be asking around though, because when I emailed Facebook support, they pretended the feature never existed.
Who owns the data? We'll find out.
Leave a comment