In quite a stinging – albeit back-handed – indictment of Google’s Friend Connect project, Facebook developer Charlie Cheever has posted an announcement on the Facebook Developers’ noticeboard that the social-networking website will not be joining up to Friend Connect just yet.
Not respecting privacy
In his statement, Cheever says: “Now that Google has launched Friend Connect, we’ve had a chance to evaluate the technology.
“We’ve found that it redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users’ knowledge, which doesn’t respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our Terms of Service.”
He continues to say: “We think MySpace’s Data Availability, Google Friend Connect, and Facebook Connect can be part of a great movement in the industry to give users a better and safer experience online, while respecting user privacy.
“We look forward to working with our developer community and everyone else in the industry to help all of our users take their information, and their privacy, with them wherever they go.”
Friends not-united
Considering the point of the Friend Connect, Data Availability, and Facebook Connect projects is about making the internet a more transparently social place – where you can share and share alike all your online information – it does seem that this bickering between three heavyweights of the web world is bringing about anti-social measures.
Instead of a unified social-network, the whole thing is becoming worryingly divided.
