Facebook-Scoble: An Executive summary

For those of you who went back to work today or played with your kids (or parents) here a summary of what occupied the attention of a great many people in my Neighborhood.

1.The incident began on late-night Twitter where Scobleizer often hangs out with his international crony collection.  For him it was rather intimate. Only a few hundred of his closest fans were there.  When he announced he was banished from Facebook, this group was outraged on his behalf.  This is a bit strange, since a majority of these people have abandoned Facebook for Twitter anyhow.

2. People woke up and more detached observers started noting that Facebook had acted precisely in accordance with its rules of engagement. They started arguing that Scoble broke the rules and Facebook was right to banish him. One commenter said "banned for life."

3. TechCrunch chimed in saying that Scoble had foolishly become the inadvertent flunky for Plaxo, which had a pretty solid ring of truth to it, I thought. TC then focused it's wrath on Plaxo for the desperate act of manipulation against Facebook who continues to whoop Plaxo's tush in terms of user adoption. Most everyone thought that these were valid additions to the conversation.

4. Facebook surprised many, including me, by responding in a reasoned, standard way, precisely as they would any other customer. Facebook sent Scoble a letter telling him what he had done wrong, asking him not to do it again and reinstating his account. It took them less than a day to do it

5. Scoble got to break the news in a livestream.

Summary of Summary:

• Scoble did something goofy, but no one suspects him of being a data scraper. He got lots of attention, which he's very fond of and suffered no loss of credibility or stature. A week from now his audience will have almost forgotten this incident which was heavily watched, but it was a slow news day.
• Plaxo got another black eye, but the face of the company is already so bruised it's pretty hard to notice--except that TechCrunch guy hits pretty hard.
• Facebook comes out looking pretty good, but gained no ground in overall perception. They still aren't talking much to customers and they seem to be embracing the crap that says their customers are the advertisers. If the users leave, the advertisers will follow. Piss off your most popular user-customers and there's a mass migration. But in te shorterm, score one for them.
• Overall impact on anything is nearly nil, but it did make the day go faster.

Comments

[Nagaraju]

Shel - Excellent analysis, summary and reasoning from a consumer point of view.

[Paul Walsh]

And what's your take on all of this Shel? I'm keen to hear your opinion.

[Paul Walsh]

@Nagaraju - It's possible that I missed something, where's the analysis? I'm not being sarcastic, it's late here in the UK and it's possible that my tired eyes have overlooked it.

[Nagaraju]

@Paul Walsh - My takeaways from Shel's post which I think are dead on are

a) Facebook got this right. My company http://www.boorah.com is in the business of aggregating user generated content but when it comes to personal information, corporations need to be held to a higher standards than individuals and hence Facebook was right

b) As for Plaxo, i think they could have messaged it better and an already tarnished image hasn't been helped with this episode ( granted it was an early release)

c) If it weren't for Scoble we wouldn't be discussing this today.

just yet another episode but I thought Shel summarized it pretty well when I was just catching up with the whole episode.

[shel israel]

Nagaraju,

Thanks. Paul if you don't see analysis in this post, I'm sorry it's the best I can do.

[Kami Huyse]

Thanks Shel, I was out of pocket today and missed all of the details of the story. It is too bad that Plaxo is getting so much flack. I have used them for quite awhile as a free online backup for my Outlook folder. When they tried to become a social network and slug it out with FB and LinkedIn was when the problems started.

[pat phelan]

Shel
I am afraid I am going to have to disagree here.
Robert's a great guy and I like him a lot but I for one as a follower on Twitter and a reader of his blog feel manipulated.
1.Robert gets banned
2. later (much later I think and after Plaxo ended his NDA :-)) he announces he was data scraping using Plaxo's product on the Facebook site thus breaking Facebook's T&C's
3. Massive amounts of Fanboy's rush to Robert's defence

Have a look around at the genuine guys on Twitter or even ask them, ask @paulwalsh above (whom I think asks you a question above)
whilst I dont speak for Paul I feel that a lot of people feel that the only people scored here was team Scoble.
Doesnt mean I dont like the guy but am disappointed to say the least

[shel israel]

Pat,

I'm often arder on Robert than most people, but he did nothing nasty here. Robert only scraped his own data with the tool.Actually, he let Plaxo use it's beta tool to do that. He never proetsted what FaceBook did. My take on that part of it is Robert made on a non-evil mistake. He went oops very publicly. What manipulation do you see on his part? To me the most interesting part is the speed in which Facebook responded, and the proper manner in which they did so.

[shel israel]

That's "harder" on Robert, not arder.

[pat phelan]

I feel the "oopps very publicly" was the manipulation Shel
This could have been all sorted with an email and Robert's account would have been re-activated.

[shel israel]

That's just not Robert's style. It may be yours or mine, but asking Robert to deal with this privately is tantamount to asking a leaopard to change it's spots.

[Mark Evans]

Good summary. My original take is that Facebook dropped the ball by giving Scoble an opportunity to tell the world about his woes. At the end of the day, Facebook performed well, Scoble came off looking like Scoble, Plaxo got bruised, and the issue of who owns your data got a much-needed bump into the spotlight.

Mark

[Paul Walsh]

@shel - it wasn't Robert's data, that's the point. I gave my information to Facebook. I didn't give it to Robert (although he has my email address from personal conversations).

I didn't give Robert permission to scrape my personal contact details to give to (of all companies) Plaxo.

What about Robert's connections who keep their profile closed and only permit their friends to see it? They too had their details collected.

I still like Robert and I don't think as a person, he's disrespectful in the slightest. I do think his act was disrespectful - actually that's a little harsh. He probably didn't realise he'd suffer such a backlash. He probably expected everyone to laugh it off and thank him for highlighting what we already know; you can't easily export information from FB.

[marshal sandler]

When I started a Facbook page it might have been nice to receive and Email with a welcome message and in simple english not legaleze their do's and do nots ! I have a problem when Any firm uses the law to protect their mistakes ! The world is full of "ok with corrections ! " My content on Facebook creates a buck for them !
I don't get any revenue ! I am not a Teche just the ordinary user and
maybe some one would define to the "everyone" the sin of scrapeing!