A match made in heaven: Scoble and Plaxo
3 01 2008What do you get when you pair the world’s most tireless self-promoter with a service famous spamming people? The Scolaxo virus.
I’m glad that Scoble was banned by Facebook for violating FBs TOS by running a scraping app from Plaxo. You can scream at the top of your lungs that it’s your data, but that’s not the case. You’re the tenant, and if you have a pet you can be evicted.
I’m glad about this for a couple of reasons. For one, he’s going to realize how few of these people really want to hear from him, but instead want to network with another. For another anybody who “friended” Scoble will now have to deal with him for life or change their e-mails. It won’t be easy to escape Scoble now that he has your info in the Plaxo vault.
I’m also happy because Facebook is sticking with their TOS rather than let Scoble run roughshod over them. Scoble has a history of being banned for violating TOS. Hopefully he will grow up and use products the way they are intended. If Scoble wants something that is different, he should build it. (ed. note: Don’t be ridiculous, he couldn’t build a table from IKEA.)
I find myself in the uncommon position of agreeing with Arrington who says that Plaxo flubs it. I have to agree, I mean they have a bad enough reputation as it stands. They must be banking on OpenSocial to be a huge success, but that’s a bad bet. ‘Tis better to be able to stand out on your own than to wait for the rest of the world to come along. Open Social is going to be a big flea market and Plaxo will have a booth in the back near the port-a-pottie. Good luck being sold now!
Sorry you totally miss the point. As part of the action of inviting Scoble to be my friend (or accepting an invite to be his) I gave him the right to see my email address and contact me. Facebook’s “you can revoke that right at any time” is like asking to see the prices on the menu after you ordered and ate the food. (ok, the other image I had involved an adult theme)
Once someone gets to see it, it’s out there and you can’t take it back. Ask anyone in a relationship who says something and then wanted to take it back. Facebook is building a business on a principle that you surrender any rights you have to information because you choose to use their free service.
So it’s ok in your book for Facebook to scrape other sites for information, use it in ways that the web operator and the user un-intended but god forbid someone chooses to exercise their rights to information.
Here is an item to ponder. If I gave you a business card, but the card has a disclaimer that you cannot mechanically or electronically reproduce it, do you have the right to drop it into your cardscan scanner to add it to your Outlook?
If you say I don’t have that right, do you think I have the right to transcribe that information myself into an outlook contact card by entering it at the keyboard (either myself, or by contracting services to enter my data for me).
Where does the line get drawn, or do I go back to drawing on the walls of my cave instead of the wall at Facebook. BTW get all those dammed anthropologist out of my cave, those drawings are (c) 10,000BC by ME .. Didn’t you understand the squiggle, dash, dash, and circle as my copyright symbol?
Rick
Rick, I get the concept. I have no problem with harvesting e-mails from Facebook, there’s even an app for it (http://apps.facebook.com/friendcsv/) What you can’t do is violate Facebook’s TOS and complain. Rules are rules and they are so for a reason…. I certainly don’t want malicious automated scripts on Facebook and want them to police this.
Scoble is just a whiner and pawn for Plaxo… don’t buy his hype.