I just finished posting my first post over on the DataPortability Project Blog titled Redefining and Standardizing ‘Ownership’. The DPP Blog has been live since December and the guys have been doing a great job covering things that are important to the Project. Honestly, i haven't had the time in addition to all the other things i have been doing on behalf of the Project to blog, but this afternoon i went ahead (with some encouragement from the chat room) and posted my thoughts on the recent changes that Facebook made to their Terms.

The latest Facebook step (misstep?) occurred last week when they made some changes to their Terms of Service and one of the items of contention by many is the following statement:

“You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content. “

The Consumerist Blog posted on the subject yesterday and today many have been commenting. and facebook themselves have made public comments and started a discussion board to address questions from users.

It is obvious that as a community we need to redefine and standardize the way we define and award rights to ownership of data and this is one of the reasons that i am involved in the DataPortabilty Project [and currently serve as the Chairperson of the Steering Committee]. I realize that it has been common in the world of the internet to let 'Vendors' own what goes into their EULAs and TOCs- but we shouldn't continue to let that be. More thoughts over there.

There are many things i love about the world we live in- one is the power of the 'user' (i have always been one for group protests and group advocacy!) and i personally think that it fair to say that Facebook's new announcement last night on Opening Up Facebook Status, Notes, Links, and Video to Facebook Platform is about the users and developers who represent the 'facebookers' demanding that their user data is 'open'- if no one was asking and threatening to go elsewhere as they find other great services they probably wouldn't be listening.

Looking back at the last year - Scoblegate was only 13 months ago!- there have certainly been a lot of steps towards the vision and mission that the DataPortability Project has been working towards and personally it is fulfilling to see these large vendors taking heed and listening to their 'users'.

These steps by the big vendors are quite important but also need to be reviewed as to what their end game is. Over on the DataPortability Blog, Steve Repetti one of the DataPortability Project steering committee members and a huge advocate of dataportability in his own products writes:

"On the one hand there is very little about this that is open. Facebook controls the data, its access, and its availability. Facebook defines the integration, they determine the protocols, and the APIs, and even who can and cannot use any of this. This “openness” is all under the oversight, control, direction, and whim of the giant."

I agree with Steve's sentiment that, "Facebook has made huge strides in extending its world beyond the looming walls of their garden" and i certainly look forward to hearing more feedback from the developers who will be working with the APIs over the next few days as to what is truly possible based on the APIs that have been made available.

Reading through some of the other commentary this afternooon, i love Dare Obasanjo's comment ' Facebook is now acknowledging that their users use other websites and integration with those sites doesn't require these sites to become sharecroppers on the digital farmland that is the Facebook canvas page. '-yep. the main difference is that the value of the experience will perhaps no longer need to be within facebook- and that is just one of the reasons that supporting data portability is valuable to the user and the ecosystem as a whole.

and two additional comments have to make...

1. i find it interesting that facebook chose to make this announcement at 4:54pm PST- when most of the world has called it quits for the day and many for the weekend as they go about their lives

2. i realize that this is a 'developer' announcement and that the general user doesn't care much for API related information- but shouldn't the facebook blog post an overview for what this means to the facebook "user"? You know that person that 'friended' you last month that is not involved in the tech scene- currently spends little to no time on other social networks sites being that they only recently got 'on board social networking' and because facebook was the first one they joined they have no idea what this all means about moving around their user data?

Early this week prior to pressing 'publish' on my "Who gives a F? Florida, Facebook and 'Friends'" post i thought "am i going to sound ignorant that i didn't 'realize' how big and embedded Facebook is getting?". Well i got some positive feedback and agreement on flickr that others had only recently been noticing the same thing outside of their 'tech network' and today I felt even more vindicated when i saw the swoon of news on Techmeme triggered by Mark Zukerburg's annoucement that they have hit the 150million user mark.

I especially like John Furrier's take of why Facebook is being quickly adopted by all types of web users:
"Simply put: they broker transactions from finding lost friends, staying in touch with existing friends, making new friends, to finding and buying products and services."

And of course the last part of that statement is the money maker on the table.

Image|Flickr|Mathew Field

This holiday season we headed down to Florida to spend some time with the families both on the west and east coast of Florida. So we managed a couple of days on each coast which is usually just enough for me (i admit i am not a big fan of Florida often citing this great Bugs Bunny clip to compliment my feelings).



But none the less i know a lot of good people who live in Florida so i will let it be because that is not the point of my post~ The reason i am writing this post is that through the week we were there one of the things that i observed (as i remained mostly offline by choice) was the incessant mentioning of Facebook- and this was not in my Silicon Valley echo chamber so of course i took notice.

Now i have been on Facebook for a while, and have found it quite useful mostly around events but i have really never become a 'fan' of Facebook itself or its 'walled garden' strategies. Most recently i have been 'friended' by people who i went to high school/college/previous lives- and mostly i am kinda indifferent about it to tell you the truth. This afternoon i cleaned up my FB 'inbox' (so much noise!) and thought who would i like to connect with that i have not been in touch with over the years and i really could not think of anyone. call me indifferent and heartless if you care to...

So course i have read the articles about the growth of Facebook over the last year- and certainly did not doubt them- but rather chose to ignore the fact that Facebook has become a very mainstream social networking application- a social hub for many regardless of what age and demographic they are. So i think it is time for me to start paying more attention once again to Facebook again because you know my theory on consumers- the apps they use at home is what they want at work.

.....perhaps next time i go to Florida, people at the bar, supermarket, restaurant, and simply waiting in line will be talking about Twittering each other (i have no doubt that in many circles they already are!).

For years i tried to correct my friends when they said things like 'my friend at work said' or 'my friend on the team said' with questions like 'are they really friends or co-workers, teammates, acquaintances or someone you know?'. They probably thought i was annoying when i asked, well actually i know they do sometimes find me annoying but that is a story for another blog.

Fast forward a couple of years after most of them were well 'trained' to use the term as i deemed appropriate and now a days everyone seems to be every one's friend. Today's New York Times has an article 'Myspacebook. past. Friending, Ancient or Otherwise' (found via Techmeme) which is about how some Academic researchers are starting to explore the parallels between online social networks and tribal societies and how they are seeing a resurgence of ancient patterns of oral communication. Aside from picking up another new word to use safely in describing social media, 'orality' - the article does make some interesting points on the emergence of oral culture online. “Orality is participatory, interactive, communal and focused on the present. The Web is all of these things.”

So i just grabbed our beautiful 1982 edition of America Heritage Dictionary (you know the one with the small pictures on the margin), that was given to my husband for his 8th grade graduation - spent a good simple 15 minutes of pleasure looking at words like exacerbate- and got to the definition of friend:

friend n. 1. A person whom one knows, likes, and trusts. 2. An acquaintance. 3. A person with whom one is allied in a struggle or cause; comrade 4.One who supports, sympathizes with, or patronizes a group, cause, or movement.

So maybe my friends where right- if i kinda like my coworker i may be able to use the phrase 'my friend at work' when describing them in a casual conversation. So folks, yes the word 'friend' can be used to describe different levels of friendship but going forward i insist that we only reserve BFF for the truest of friends of course...

So this morning, i logged into Facebook to see what my 'friends' are up to today and noticed that my friend Mario Sundar who is the Community Evangelist at LinkedIn just posted a link to a 2006 article from the Columbia Business School How Well Do Your Friends Know You? . With all the controversy around the recent Facebook Ad Beacon advertising program it is an interesting read because it questions how much we really know about the people we call our 'friends' and that most people want specific, personalized suggestions from friends whom they believe, correctly or not, know them well.

The key however is that i want to be able to call on the different levels of 'friendships' i have both online and off across multiple networks when i look for recommendations. You might be my friend because we like the same type of music so i might be interested in what new albums you are buying, but i might really have no desire whatsoever to trust your purchasing decision around cars or tech gadgets. But most importantly i want to control and own that data about who and why people are my friends and be able to use it where and when i want to. At this point, although there are some initiatives on their way to solve this starting with the ability to port my data, that knowledge of who i trust when is only in my brain.

Want to be my friend? Well then just 'friend me' already! (but please don't make it a random request- if you tell me where you found me and how we are connected (even owing up to being a random find) it might increase the chances of me wanting to be your friend.

yes i use the root word 'friend' over 25 times in this post- so get over it my friends.

The other day i posted some jobs that are open in the Dow Jones San Francisco office in my Facebook Marketplace profile- while i was posting them the option to buy a Facebook Flyer was presented and i wondered if it would be worth it. The costs didn't seem too high but i passed- well today via a twitter message from Jeremiah Owyang i saw this post on Charlene Li's blog about a test she is running with Facebook Flyers so i thought i would give it a try since i had a new posting to put up. Hey for 4 bucks it is definitely worth it- perhaps even better then a virtual Facebook beer for a buck that i will send to anyone that gets the job. Shel Israel also got into the action via the same Twitter message.A couple of things Facebook can do to make the service better would be to guide the flyer creator (i did it through the marketplace prompts)- for example providing a preview prior to publishing, suggesting a length for the title etc. Unless you go through the main page to create a flyer it doesn't tell you that you can't make any changes to the flyer once you purchase (BOO they should have at least had a warning!).

In the FAQ section (after i purchased) i found good information including the following : There is a 200 character limit for the body of the Flyer (including spaces and returns) and a 25 character limit for the title. In addition, there is a 15 character limit for words in the body of the Flyer.

I received a Facebook message today from a friend and former coworker letting me know how her new gig was- she seems to be happy enough but imagine my shock to hear that her new company does not allow Gmail or any sort of chat- seems like Facebook is still ok - well at least for the time being. The other day i met someone who told me that her computer at work (insurance claims) only has access to corporate applications- no web access whatsoever!

I understand issues of compliance and security for certain types of workplaces but for some stupid reason i am always surprised to hear this since my tolerance for not being 'connected' is very very low...

According to this Sophos report- 50% of employees are blocked from access to Facebook at work. I admit i check Facebook a couple times a day, like i do Twitter, RSS feeds and Techmeme. Facebook has an 'online' status feature so i always think about coworkers who are on the East coast after hours on Facebook while it is still working hours on the West coast and they probably think i am slacking off.

Just today however- during work hours- i used Facebook to try to confirm a work related meeting. Leaving an old fashion voicemail, then knowing the person was at a conference dropping them a message in Facebook and an e-mail. Mission was accomplished- 1. E-mail returned 2. Facebook message return 3. no callback (i don't like phones either so fine by me).

I am pretty sure however that as people walk by my cube at the office- they see me on Facebook or Twitter and think i am goofing off-but it is just another communication tool for me- one that i am expanding from using only for my social 'friends' to some of my savvy clients. Right on- hopefully neither my company or theirs will block these tools and we can continue on.

What to contribute to my delinquency? :-) Join me on Facebook or Twitter.

~~above photo attributed to beewebhead via flickr

For some reason i had missed the Facebook Newsfeed preferences dashboard until today. It looks like it has been around since November 06. If you check out the announcement post it highlights some of the features of the Dashboard.

First i love the design- and agree with Larry Rubin's statement that whomever designed this feature could have been inspired by music mixing stations- very cool and easy to use.

Second, i only have 66 friends right now-but realistically see that number rising. Some are 'real' friends people i hang with all the time, others are people i like to follow in the industry or coworkers, and even people i meet at events that i might want to keep in touch. As my Facebook feeds start getting noisy- i am going to love the ability to not only indicate the types of stories i would like to see more or less of but also identify which 'friends' i want to see more and less of. love it- i can tweak my feeds based on what my attention needs are.

The reason that Facebook is able to easily do this is because of the metadata that is applied to each data element. Story types (Events, Groups, Statuses etc.) and who posted (friends). So they are taking well structured content and applying a good UI design that is easy to use for most users. Can't vouch for the results yet however.

This will also be extremely useful once (and if ever) Facebook allows you to publish your News feeds as RSS- instead of taking the whole universe of feeds you can already add some relevance post syndication and then other tools take it from there.

Dave McClure Master of 500 Hats- is going hot and heavy on his blog about Facebook. A couple days back he had a good post on how the Facebook news feeds feature is the new SEO a topic that was briefly addresses by some of the Facebook developers at the Community Next Viral Marketing event i attended last week.