DISQUS

Betsy · 1 year ago

Thanks for putting this into perspective - I watched pieces of the Twitter storm roll along, but I didn't have time to dive into the details. You summarized it nicely and managed to crystallize my own vague doubts into reasonable, clear objections.

Marina Martin · 1 year ago

Plaxo also scares me, but that's because both times I tried the service -- once years ago, and once a few months ago -- I was always paranoid that they were going to mass email all of my contacts without my permission. I can't pinpoint why they made me feel that way, exactly, but I'm just fine without it.

I think this whole Scoble issue brought to light a bigger problem -- that a lot of us are walking around with the idea that we have much privacy at all, and then getting upset when they're reminded that they don't. If it's on your Facebook profile, it's not private, no matter who your friends are or what your privacy controls are set to. If you're visiting a website, it's not private.

Do I *like* not having privacy? No. But I think there are much bigger battles to be waged in the world than keeping a company from knowing my site visiting preferences (what are they going to do -- send me ads? Ooh...). Heck, we can probably solve world peace easier than we could restore privacy post-Internet.

Michael Markman · 1 year ago

It's a good thing we're all talking about this now, but direct marketers have been managing, overlaying, corrleating, buying and selling lists since before there was a Web, let along a Web 2.0.

This horse left the barn decades ago.

Alain Joannes · 1 year ago

You are absolutely right. The more I read the Scoble's explanations, the less I trust him about what he intented to do with this Plaxo convenience.
There is a big difference between the contacts you manage in an Outlook personnal database and the so-called "friends" gathered, sometimes in a kind of random, way on the Facebook meeting place.
I don't exacty know what Scoble tried to do with pulled datas but the Facebook guys were wise. You too.

Corvida · 1 year ago

Intense and very eye opening! Thanks for sharing! Posted a link to it on my twitter page.

Christopher Herot · 1 year ago

I've never understood why Plaxo generates such fear and loathing. Sure, they made it too easy to accidentally send mass emails to your contacts, but that hardly puts them in the same category as the slimeballs who run zombie nets to send emails with fake return addresses offering to enlarge your wallet or various body parts. So far they haven't done anything more nefarious with the data they've collected and I haven't heard any good arguments why they should be trusted any less than Google or anyone else who offers to manage your address book for you. Plaxo did get into the social networking business with Pulse, but each connection there is opt-in just like Facebook. If they started displaying my address book (not just the "friends" who opted in) to the world that would be changing the rules and I would object to Scoble participating in such a scheme, but on what grounds do you suspect them of planning to do so?

Sure, Plaxo is up for sale, but don't think that couldn't happen to any other company you or your friends do business with.

Judi Sohn · 1 year ago

Christopher, that's exactly my point. Google tried to take data they already had for one purpose and turn it around towards social networking. They took #@$% for it. What they did wasn't wrong, how they went about it was.

I don't think anyone or any company is "evil." But I'm concerned about a company that is both utility and social network at the same time.

Bob Walsh · 1 year ago

Great post Judi, and one that needed to be said.

Alvin Toffler likes to say that if internet/computer technology is the turbocharged racecar moving 200 miles per hour around the track, the law is the snail clocking a foot an hour.

Do you really have a right to privacy? To not have every single piece of data about you aggregated, correlated, amassed, commodified and used by other people to manipulate you to their ends? Really? Have you looked at the Supreme Court lately?

Law is made by politicians - which is why they matter, and why every inhabitant of the Web 2.0 world had better get registered and vote.

Politicians, like tapeworms, respond to stimuli - and it's the responsibility of *all* of us apply that stimulus if we want to not have to wonder who is doing what with our data and why.

John McCrea · 1 year ago

Judi,

Thanks for wading into the big debate over data ownership and friends list portability, obviously big questions for 2008.

If I understand correctly, your position is that people should not use any online address book service without seeking the permission of the people in their address book to have their contact info uploaded to the system.

Is that a correct interpretation?

I am quite interested in your thoughts and feedback. I suspect I am misunderstanding your position -- and that you may be misunderstanding the sharing/permission model in Plaxo Pulse.

Eager to help clarify things.

John McCrea
vp of marketing, plaxo

Derrick Kwa · 1 year ago

I don't really know about the Plaxo issue, but I want to comment about the issue of offline vs online friendships, where you said the lines are blurred.

I completely agree with what you say, but as you said, it's not Scoble's (or anybody's fault). I think we really have to take a second look at the whole 'friend-ing' mechanism of social networks. The Yes-No nature was good as a starting point, but it needs to be developed further. There are too many nuances in real life friendships.

One starting point, I think, would be to have the ability to select what you want specific friends to see. Or maybe even have different 'sub-profiles' for different groups of people (something like how your friends in real life see you differently based on the social circle - colleague vs husband, etc). I don't really have a good answer to this. I asked the question at http://is.gd/ul , and would love to get your thoughts. =).

Judi Sohn · 1 year ago

@John,

If I understand correctly, your position is that people should not use any online address book service without seeking the permission of the people in their address book to have their contact info uploaded to the system.

No, that is not my position. I was a paid premium member of Plaxo before Pulse. I thought it was a great way to keep my address book synced between Outlook and Mac Address Book.

My position is that an online address book service is an online address book service. That's what I signed up for. You have flipped your focus over to social networking, using the address book service as a carrot on a stick. My profile on a social network is not an address book entry. As soon as one social network invents a tool that pulls data from another social network and doesn't seek permission for doing so, I think it's a problem.

You can't be an "address book service" when it's convenient, and a social network the rest of the time without drawing these kinds of questions.

And since you are for sale, you should be very clear about the data you have and the connections you've built (and are capable of building) with the profiles of non-members. Your privacy policy says what you won't do. I want to know what you have and can do, but don't because you're ethical. Your buyer may not be.

An address book service is putting pebbles inside a black cup. A social network is putting pebbles into a clear bowl. Which is it? It's my position that you can't have it both ways.

Judi Sohn · 1 year ago

@Derrick, I think you're right. We start teaching our children early on what is and isn't a "friend" and now it's time for adults to figure it out online.

I don't blame Robert or anyone else for pushing this to the edge. Like I said, I quietly unfriended him when I had time to think about it last year. If this was about Robert, I would have said something back then.

Facebook does have a limited profile, but it's not well understood. And even with that, I have to pick entire blocks of information and can't edit within those blocks so it's too limited a feature.

Personally, I would rather pull in content from content providers through applications and plug-ins than profiles/friends. After all, I subscribe to magazines, I don't invite the publishers/authors over for coffee so they can read me what they wrote. ;-)

There are some lines between the on and offline world that don't blur well.

John McCrea · 1 year ago

When the address book service is a "networked address book" service, as Plaxo has always been, in which each member maintains their own profile data and shares it automatically with others based on a granular permission model, your "black cup" analogy doesn't really work.

Plaxo has always been about both "data sync" and "people sync" (or user controlled data sharing). That is a very natural platform from which to build Pulse, which brings that address book to life, while fully embracing the notion of highly granular control of sharing.

And you can still use the Plaxo address book functionality without using Pulse.

Paul Denlinger · 1 year ago

I like Robert Scoble because even though I do not agree with everything he says, and sometimes he does not respond to my emails, he is human, and does not hide behind a corporate cloak. Most importantly, he is an intelligent person who brings to my attention items of interest which I might not have known about.

Result: I read almost everything from Robert Scoble, especially his shared Google Reader feed. That is more than I can say for advertisements, which for the most part just annoy me. (And I'm a former ad person.)

As for whether he cares for me as a person, or does not care for me as a person, or considers me as a friend, I don't care. If I met him at an event, I'm sure we'd have a good conversation.

For me, that's all that I ask for...

The truth is that relationships are always changing. In the online world, maybe they change even faster.

That seems to be the trend...

Dan Buell · 1 year ago

I'm sorry, I have people in my GMail address book who are not intimate friends of mine but whom I may have had one or two E-mail conversations with and Facebook imports them, I'm scratching my head to understand the difference...

Judi Sohn · 1 year ago

Dan, it's not the same. Facebook only imports long enough to check for membership. The information is not retained.

But let's assume for a second it was the exact same thing. So? I fail to understand why it's okay to do something that violates trust using the "two wrongs make a right" argument.

Why does something have to be bad so something else can be good? Whether or not Facebook is hero or hell is besides the point.

Michael J Pratt · 1 year ago

Judi, I respect your position although I disagree with some of your points. Here's one: by your logic (it's wrong for me, via Plaxo, to move my FB address book over to Plaxo - or similarly in Gmail) if I did the same manually, one by one, by reading the email image off of every one of my FB friends - I would be equally wrong? To my mind, Plaxo isn't moving the addresses - I am, with a Plaxo tool. I understand it feels spammy and a violation but I am having trouble seeing you "all address book importers are bad" argument, which is how it sounds. All that said I am now subscribing to your various feeds. another articulate voice to listen to.

Michael J Pratt · 1 year ago

oops. i should have read Robert's rebuttal 1st. didn't mean to repeat his point. sorry Scobleizer, my bad

Judi Sohn · 1 year ago

Hi Michael, it's not "right vs. wrong." It's, as the title says, a matter of trust. I never made an "all address book importers are bad" argument. I know others have made this into a Facebook vs. the world thing, but I don't let my kids get away with a "but everyone else is doing it" argument either.

This isn't about all address book importers. This is about this address book importer. Plaxo has a history of playing a little looser with ethics, and they supposedly had changed their ways. This episode throws my trust of this company into more doubt than it was before.

If you choose to trust data with Plaxo, that is your choice. It concerns me that as a now non-member, my data is still with a company that I don't trust. They are by far not the only example of this. I know that's the way it is nowadays. But that doesn't improve my trust of a company that seems to be diving into the new open/social web with more aggressive "what's in it for me and #@$% everyone else" gusto that I'm comfortable with.

As always, my opinion, my impressions. But I'm not an A-list blogger...I'm just your average customer. So I think it doesn't matter the excuses or explanations of "pushing Facebook's buttons." It was a slimy move.

It's like it almost doesn't matter how many charities WalMart donates to, because they blow it the next time they open a store in a new town and drive out the small guy. Trust and perception matter, and a company that was already on the fence in the hearts and minds of many customers should have taken a much higher ground.

Jon · 1 year ago

Judy - So it appears to me that you have more of a problem with Plaxo's architecture than with the fact that Scoble tried to download his contacts from Facebook. Would you have a problem with what Scoble did if he imported his Facebook contacts directly into his Outlook address book without sending them to Plaxo first?

Judi Sohn · 1 year ago

Jon, no. It's not a technical issue. It's about trust. Perception and intentions. My problem is that Scoble, in an effort to "push Facebook's buttons" schemed with a company that has its own customer trust issues to pull data out of system that whether right or wrong, didn't want that data taken.

He didn't genuinely want or care to have those 4,500 contacts in Outlook, he did it to prove a point and help Plaxo. That's not someone that I personally want to label as a "friend," but that's just me.

I wouldn't have a problem if he asked for volunteers to help him test something, or better yet, had encouraged Plaxo to work above ground on a syncing solution with Facebook.

veronicaromm · 1 year ago

I fear them both and actually cancelled both Facebook and Plaxo. I think...

Matt · 1 year ago

Although I'm not 100% sure what Plaxo is good for, I would definitely appreciate having my contacts updated automatically. And if Plaxo has everyone's information what good is it really? It's not qualified information so you're not singled out--it probably couldn't even be used to figure out who I plan to vote for; something that would easily be answered by someone who knows me.

What I don't like is the new social networking part. I don't need another web 2.0 site that I will never check. I'm sure this is opt out anyway. So what is the big deal about?

Keesha · 1 year ago

I really do not know what to think about the article Scoble, Facebook & Plaxo: It’s matter of trust, And Fear. I can understand how people do not want their personal information shared without their permission, but then I think why you would join a social network where millions of people read and share information all day it is just a matter of time before your person information is put out for everybody to see. I am not surprised that people are selling other people’s information without their knowledge.
I do feel that Plaxo has a moral responsibility to tell people that they have their personal information on file. I think there needs to be more security when it comes to internet sharing. But I think that if you are putting yourself out there, you should be aware that you may become a victim of all kinds of internet scams and this story is a perfect example.

Rebecca · 1 year ago

That is very scary; having your personal information available to others even if you do not wish for them to have access to that information. Why are people so willing to sell out their friends, acquaintances, and anyone else they come into contact with? I do not belong to any such groups and it worries me that my niece, nephew, and friends share information on such sites as My Space, to me it is all the same. You get onto these sites and share your information with others thinking it is just with friends and the company is collecting all that data. You have no way of knowing what happens to that data while you’re using the Plaxo or other such social networks. Your information could be shared with their sister companies (if they have such companies) and then one or both companies could be sold to the same or different company and now your information is going who knows where.
My friend sent me an e-mail giving me access to her My Space, the catch is I had to start a My Space account to see the pictures she was sharing. Scary the pictures my friend wanted to share were her children. So now those in charge have her personal information and know what her family looks like. I don’t share information in such ways as Plaxo because I do not trust them and am afraid of what will become of my personal information and any information my friends share with me.