Ridiculous. Facebook could whitelist only the user, not any proxy, to download whatever data friends already make available to users inside the boundaries of privacy controls. This is only sensible since it's already exposed to the user. If the user dedicated human time to archiving a bunch of web pages, they could reconstruct their contacts. But it's much simpler for the computer to do it.
The user could sell out their friends to a third party if they chose to (opt in). But Zynga would only get access if the user said so.
The reason Facebook won't do it is that it would commoditize the social graph and allow straight head to head competition on features. I think no one, even Facebook, knows how that would turn out...
Except for Google, who clearly decided to make it happen.
Comments
Ridiculous. Facebook could whitelist only the user, not any proxy, to download whatever data friends already make available to users inside the boundaries of privacy controls. This is only sensible since it's already exposed to the user. If the user dedicated human time to archiving a bunch of web pages, they could reconstruct their contacts. But it's much simpler for the computer to do it.
The user could sell out their friends to a third party if they chose to (opt in). But Zynga would only get access if the user said so.
The reason Facebook won't do it is that it would commoditize the social graph and allow straight head to head competition on features. I think no one, even Facebook, knows how that would turn out...
Except for Google, who clearly decided to make it happen.