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.
