In the news today we see yet another case of Facebook shutting down a service aimed at librating contact info from the Facebook walled garden.
Facebook believes you shouldn’t be able to export the contact info your friends have shared with you—Except when it doesn’t believe that (their Dec 2009 deal with Yahoo! which enabled contact export from FB to Yahoo Mail)
From a PR perspective, Facebook spins their “lock-in” strategy as in the best interests of protecting “your” contact info. But the fact remains that you cannot take your friends contact info with you to another service FB deems competitive (e.g. Google+, your email contacts, your smartphone) unless it’s also in the best interest of Facebook (Yahoo deal).
If they truly care about protecting that contact info, why allow Yahoo users do something they don’t allow anyone else to? I figure it’s because in Yahoo outsourcing social to Facebook they also agreed not to compete on social which means I think FB is really out to protect its business more than it’s users data.
Latest news coverage of Facebook’s shutdown of a contact exporter:
- CNET: Facebook blocks a second contact export tool
- GigaOM: Get Your Hands Off That Contact Info, Says Facebook
- As contrasted by the Google+ approach: Google Takeout
- And of course Plaxo’s long standing position on data portability.