Last week, Facebook made some big announcements at the company's F8 conference, including a few aggressive moves to extend the company's presence to third party Web sites. The plan consisted largely to enable people to "like" content from around the Web, transmitting their downstream activity back to Facebook, and also - garnering an incredible amount of backlash from those opposed to the company's approach to automatically opt users in - they introduced the opportunity for partners to personalize your Web experience based on your profile. Facebook's introductions, as close as they are to exactly what I have been asking for over the last few years, are running contrary to what the company's large user base expected from the network, and the company's methods are presumably violating the public trust. While I do not have plans to delete my profile out of protest, as many have, I do not plan on acting as if any of my content placed on the site is done under the realm of being private. I expect my data, all of it, to be publicly searchable, shareable and indexable by the company and its partners, forever, and will act with that in mind.

In April of 2009, I practically begged for ad companies to "truly leverage our social profiles", specifically Facebook. At the time, I wrote:

" I think the real money is in Facebook offering to team up with all the major advertisers on the Web (Google/Doubleclick included) and letting said advertisers tap into our personal profiles, giving them a cut of the downstream revenue. Facebook has proven they know us, even as their ad team does not. Turn over the right data to ad people who do know what they're doing, and maybe I'll stop being annoyed by ads that have nothing to do with me."

Last week, Facebook opened up my profile to a select few partners, including Pandora, Yelp and Docs.com, a Microsoft front for their Web Office plans. While the ads are still terrible on Facebook (and other sites), presumably these three starter sites are going to be customized just for me. Sure enough, logging into each presents a "personalized" experience, featuring avatars of friends with whom I am connected. In theory, my recommendations on Yelp get better, my musical recommendations from Pandora get better and Docs... well, I have no idea. But two out of three's not bad, right?


I can't get too riled up about Facebook trying to make the Web a better place through leveraging my social profile. To be honest, I want this.

I want these downstream sites to tap into my personal profile and use the data they find. And I also believe that I am acting in a way online that doesn't have any skeletons in the closet, if all the data becomes public some day. I have seen Facebook work to extend to a more "public" (not open) status, and expect all my content to go with it.

I also can't get too riled up about Facebook's making this move unilaterally, especially given my stance on Buzz, when I thought the company (Google) made some initial mistakes around privacy, but I stuck with it, waiting for them to get the formula right. To accept Google's issues, but throw Facebook to the wolves would accurately appear two-faced.

From what I have seen, the major concerns around Facebook's moves are two-fold. First, there is a concern that they made these "special agreements" with the three mentioned merchants, and that this might be the tip of the iceberg, as they gain more relationships, and extend the ability for these relationships to see more and more of your content. Second, there is a concern, one I believe to be accurate, that the overwhelming majority of Facebook users will not only not understand what has changed, but they also will not know how to opt out of the process. It is clear that getting out of the process requires many steps, many more than it took to get into the process, effectively zero.

The flareup of response around Facebook's move has spawned more feedback from the network's blog, which aims to quell some of the concerns. In a post today, prefaced by "answers to your questions", Facebook said "Our highest priority is to keep and build the trust of the more than 400 million people who use our service every month," adding "None of your information—your name or profile information, what you like, who your friends are, what they have liked, what they recommend—is shared with the sites you visit with a plugin." The company also pointed to a help center, which tries to explain what is shared with whom when. The response wasn't very reassuring, but was better than nothing.

I am reminded of the phrase "first do no harm", which is often incorrectly attributed to the Hippocratic Oath. If Facebook has changed the rules in the middle of the game, and is slowly exposing more customer information than before, after they had an assumption of privacy, then that is wrong. But the question is, has Facebook violated users' trust based on the letter of the law, or the intent of the law? It seems to me that there are those who feel no data from Facebook should ever be shared with third parties without your explicit permission. But there are others, no doubt some at Facebook, who think you should be able to share as much as possible, until reaching the point where somebody could get hurt. So we ask, "where is the harm?" The benefit of a customized music station the borrows from your friends' likes seems fairly innocuous, as does personalized restaurant reviews. But then, what next?

One prominent tech geek I talked to on Friday asked me if I would be comfortable knowing my insurance carrier had shared my medical history with a third party, without giving me the opportunity to decline - suggesting Facebook's moves were the same - as one "trusted" resource passed along personal private data I had not intended to be public. While I understood his point, I did not share the outrage, as I never assumed my data on Facebook would be safe. In contrast to Blippy, Mint.com and others (which I discussed yesterday), I never had an explicit relationship with Facebook whereby I would give them information that, if it leaked, would fall into violation of contract or even legal territory.

As the tumult continues to rage, I think we are in an odd position in the industry, where we are in serious need of independent third party leadership who has our own data protection and privacy in mind. Many of the biggest names in the open standards front or in the privacy game are now working hard at the very companies who have a vested interest in monetizing our data. It's both a great thing and a bad thing, but when a company like Facebook makes moves like they have, it seems like we don't have anyone trustworthy to stand up and say "This is wrong" if it is indeed wrong, and spell it out. That's why on Saturday I posted a quick note to Google Buzz asking the leaders of these companies to find a way to help users without taking potshots at each other. I posted that note on Buzz, rather than this blog, as it was a casual and personal note, and it reached the people I hoped it would. But it also led to some tremendous conversation in the comments about why we need independent voices that have impact, and right now, it might have to be the government's oversight that lays down the law.

We are already seeing U.S. Senators asking for a solution to problems like those posted by Facebook and other companies who have our personally identifiable data and look to be cavalier about sharing it. Charles Schumer is already pushing the FTC for guidelines. But the case, as with most cases involving the Web, innovation and changing culture, is not cut and dry. There is not a "good guy" and a "bad guy" in this case. Take for example, David Recordon's position when he wrote: "Why f8 was good for the open web". I believe David thinks what Facebook is doing the right thing, just as much as I think some prominent Googlers and other techies think that Facebook is doing absolutely the wrong thing. It's a measure of whether you think Facebook is on the path to violating your trust, or if they already have, and depending on your experience, upbringing or personal preference, your results may vary.

As far as I am concerned, Facebook is in a very difficult position in terms of being able to make change and do so without upsetting the apple cart. The company enticed nearly a half-billion users into sharing some of their most private activity into the network, and now the company needs to grow in new ways that will require this data to be mined and shared. The company probably doesn't feel like it has the luxury of asking a percentage of its users for permission to share their data, because they know very few will outright, without convincing. To do so automatically and asking them to work hard to get out of the situation is a much more lucrative and beneficial position for them in terms of revenue and growth. It's very similar to what Dare Obasanjo of Microsoft said when we were at SXSW this March, when he suggested that users and companies' goals were in conflict.

Facebook has such a strong position in the social Web that they can do practically anything and keep users. My family uses Facebook for their networking, photo sharing and commenting. Even if they are vaguely aware of changes, they aren't going to delete their Facebook accounts because Facebook started being aggressive with its partners. And they know this. Facebook has an opportunity now to leverage their social capital and grow to be more of the rest of the Web - even if their users would not have given them permission in advance. Whether you think we are approaching the point of no return, or if we already crossed it, that's the direction and you can't undo it. Just plan on your data online being public - all of it.

The advent of a new week regularly means the addition of new employees to Twitter, and as is common, the much-discussed ambitious microblogging powerhouse is draining the intellectual coffers of larger Valley titans. Today, the company welcomes three more to its team, two of whom call Google their last stop. One of the adds was most recently the lead product manager for "Watch and Discovery" at YouTube.

The three new hires include Jacob Thornton (@jacobthornton), Brian Larson (@balarson) and Shiva Rajaraman (@shivalr). Their hires bring the total number of people followed by Twitter's team list to 191, which we've been told includes contractors and other friends of the company.

Jacob Thornton (LinkedIn | Twitter) was most recently listed as a product designer for Threadsy, a unified social messaging startup that was a participant at TechCrunch50 in 2009. Jacob, a social media app designer, worked on the front-end for Threadsy, and his departure is likely the reason that Threadsy is looking to hire a front-end Web site and HTML ninja. (Given the job was posted 2 weeks ago and his start date is today, it seems more than coincidence)

In parallel, Jacob also is behind the project somelemonade, a visual reader for Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, Picasa, YouTube and Vimeo. That side project recently crossed 500 users. He joins Twitter as a release engineer.


Shiva Rajaraman (LinkedIn | Twitter) was the senior product manager at YouTube for Watch and Discovery, where he was in place since September 2006, a month prior to Google's $1.65 billion acquisition. Shiva joins Twitter as a product manager focused on monetization.

Brian Larson (Twitter | Google Profile) is most recently of Google. Prior to joining Google, Brian picked up a computer science master's degree from Stanford, and co-authored a paper on distributed recovery from attacks on peer to peer systems (see PDF) in 2002. He joins Twitter as a software engineer on the search team.

In an up and down week for the startup, Blippy gained a huge amount of unwanted attention on Thursday and Friday as it was discovered that four (and eventually five) of the company's users saw their credit card numbers exposed, in full, through creative Google searches (since removed). As somebody who has registered my credit card and debit card with Blippy, you might think my knee-jerk reaction would be to pull out my data, but it's not, and I am just as supportive of the creative site for sharing transactions as I ever have been. I will continue to encourage people who want to share this activity to use the site, and I am not any more shy about putting my data into their product than I was before. Similarly, I will continue tracking all my data on Mint.com and other sites, because these companies and others like them, have proven themselves to be trustworthy and innovative - delivering me real value.

I joined Blippy in January largely because as I have been participating in and advocating sites that tell people what we like for years, Blippy takes the next step and tells people what we actually purchase, going beyond the "like". I have watched Blippy expand its social capabilities, as you can follow friends, have conversations on transactions, and see groupings of similar behavior, seeing who is buying from specific vendors, or even finding out if other friends are buying the same things you are.


Unlike some users of the site, I opted to go "All in" with Blippy, sharing not just my soft accounts, like Zappos and iTunes, with the service, but all my purchases. That means you see the boring fillups at Chevron on my debit card, my cash withdrawals from the ATM, and yes, even my wife's Teletubbies DVD rentals on Netflix for my kids to watch. I did this because for much of what I do, I am living life in public. I believe in sharing as much as possible, partly demonstrating that there is little to hide. And while some of my transactions are boring, that's just who I am.

When it was reported this week, by VentureBeat, who, from my understanding, worked on the story for a few days before issuing their initial story, that some cards were exposed, it was quickly shown to have been a limited bug, related to early beta users using a specific card from a specific bank - and was completely out of the ordinary. Blippy quickly responded to the issue, and worked publicly with Google to solve the issue, keeping all of us informed, if we were nervous. (I wasn't)


Meanwhile, you saw the typical tech press pile-on from people who had done no original research, flocking to the story like youths at a soccer game chasing a ball, as blood in the water can be exciting. But VentureBeat calmly and professionally kept the story updated, while the Blippy blog did the same, open and with considerate remorse.

There is a huge difference between making a mistake and being untrustworthy - and for me, putting my card data in Blippy is not dissimilar to putting my credit card data into Mint.com, having Intuit find my W-2 data come tax time, or entering my credit card information over and over and over from e-commerce site to e-commerce site. In order for Blippy and Mint.com and these other businesses to succeed, they need to ensure the safety of users' private data, and practically without exception, they have done so. The companies' success will come through their amassing a high number of users, and being able to report trend data based on groups and demographics, not on individuals - and thus, it is in their best interest to keep your data safe and secure.


ReadWriteWeb chronicled some of Blippy's response to the slip-up today, when they said what to do when a PR disaster strikes your startup. Blippy did the right thing by all accounts, apologizing, making full disclosure, and reporting how the issue was being addressed. Meanwhile, Google's Matt Cutts took to Twitter to explain what that company had done to fix the issue also. That's transparency and a closed loop response.

If I had more options to share even more data with Blippy, I would do it, and getting my e-mailed updates from Mint.com is among the highlights of this data-driven geek's week. It benefits the Web at large to get more real data about our purchases and activities public, and Blippy is one of those making the process interesting. I trust them with my information, and won't be changing a thing. You can find all my data here: http://blippy.com/louisgray.

In a time when the company's core business has grown to record highs, with its iPhone business, flanked by Mac sales, iTunes store revenue, software and peripherals all contributing to Apple's strongest position of all time, the company has practically opted out of the trendy move most of its peers have embraced - social media. There are no official Apple blogs, and with the exception of its iTunes Music property, there is little to see from Apple on Twitter and Facebook.

This has not impacted the company negatively, as it gets plenty of press from the Mac faithful and increasingly curious mainstream media, but in the last few months, a surprising trend has emerged - as the company's cofounder and CEO, Steve Jobs, has taken on a much more active role in responding to customers one to one from his personal e-mail account, reducing the barriers needed for end users to engage with one of the most influential people in the world. In effect, Jobs' usually quick one-liner e-mails are providing the same results many have championed with social media - access to customers, rapid response times, and providing a human face to a business.

Steve's attention to detail, and most would argue, control, over Apple's efforts is legendary. While Apple's media events have recently seen an increased number of executives speaking on behalf of the company, it is still Steve who starts things off, wraps things up, and orchestrates the process in between. Rank and file Apple employees, like those who would manage the company's social media properties, if they were active, are not blessed with the option to speak on behalf of the company, and those who make even the most minor of mistakes are at risk for termination.

Thus, there is a vacuum for official Apple news between company press releases and events. As the company has gained a higher profile with its iPad introduction, regular iPhone upgrades, and constant introductions at the iTunes store, users and developers with questions are increasingly turning to ask Steve directly about company plans, policies or even to send off notes of frustration. And he's answering. Not all of them, no doubt, and not often with significant length, but one doesn't need 1,000 words from Steve when 10 or 50 will suffice. These nuggets seem to be a big shift from Cupertino, historically tight-lipped and non-responsive to rumors or other inquiries, and it will be very interesting to see if this move is a fad, which fades quickly, or if Steve can scale as it becomes more widely known that you can reach him by simply lobbing an e-mail.

While this one man social media experiment exists, you can see Steve responding:

• Steve Jobs Replies to Email: There Won’t Be A Mac App Store
  
• Steve Jobs: If you want porn, get an Android
  
• Steve Jobs Says Apple Made a Mistake in Rejecting Pulitzer Winner’s App
  
• Steve Jobs Replies To Email: “Are You Nuts?"
  
• Steve Jobs: Apple owns the trademark on 'Pad'
  
• Steve Jobs Replies to Mail, Apple Is Dropping Support for the iPhone 2G

There are many more, but the pace is rapidly increasing, especially now that Jobs has his iPad at home. Maybe it's the environment he wanted to fire off one-line e-mails to customers, or just him getting more smooth as he ages, but it's become a highly effective press channel that doesn't need Mossberg and Goldman and others to interpret what he says as he can go directly to those who care - and I don't know of any similar high profile tech CEOs who are making themselves as accessible as Steve is in this way. Is Eric Schmidt responding to e-mail? Is Mark Zuckerberg? Ev Williams (@ev) occasionally posts replies on Twitter, but not to the types of questions Steve is fielding. I just hope Steve has found his comfort zone, and that this can be something that continues, so we don't see Apple as an impenetrable silo, but one that talks back, even if it's still through one unique individual.