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What Really Happened to Top Friends?

Posted by Nick O'Neill on June 30th, 2008 9:00 AM

Last week, the immensely popular Top Friends application was shut down by Facebook. By Friday, the company wrote in a blog post:

Recently, we suspended Top Friends, one of the most popular applications on Facebook. This application violated user privacy by displaying some profile data to people who should not otherwise have been able to see the information. Though the application developer insists that this violation was not intentional, the seriousness of the violation required us to take immediate action.

We don’t take lightly that millions of users lost their access to this application. Because so many people interact with Top Friends on a daily basis, our immediate action to suspend the application was vital in protecting users and assuring them that their confidence in Facebook and the applications on Facebook Platform are well-placed.

The application has been providing consistent functionality for a while but this finding only recently took place. Slide then received a notice to update their application within a limited period of time (less than 24 hours according to one source) otherwise it would be shut down. According to another source, RockYou also received requests from Facebook to resolve privacy issues within a few of their applications. Following an all-nighter, the company was back in compliance. Slide on the other hand did not fall into compliance and the application was shut down.

Privacy Clampdown at Facebook

So where is the Top Friends application? Can’t the company simply throw programming resources and bring the application back into compliance? Possibly, but there is speculation that another issue is at hand. This is the issue of the storage of data which has attracted increasing attention over the past couple weeks resulting in an internal clamp down on all applications abusing privacy restrictions.

There have been a number of public reports about lack of privacy on applications which generated a substantial amount of buzz. Some users that I’ve spoken to have also become weary about the use of applications due to the risk of having their data retrieved. As Dan Birdwhistell wrote yesterday, there is a ton of data that is currently accessible via the platform.

Companies Not Obeying Terms

It is becoming clear that not all companies are playing fair. There are privacy violations but in addition to that some applications are simply caching user data for more than 24 hours. With Facebook preparing to have a new services launch less than a month from now, Facebook is working overtime to pursue these companies that aren’t playing by the rules.

So did Slide break the rules and cache user data beyond the allowed period? Based on the screenshots plastered around the blogosphere last week there is a good chance that’s the case. Whether or not Slide was within the caching limits, days later Top Friends is still down and we are still waiting on the company to get their act together.

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 30th, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under Analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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    There are two issues here that you have nailed on the head, Nick. (1) User privacy. (2) Facebook data restrictions. Both of these are huge issues for Facebook and will only become more important as the stakes get higher.

    On the first issue, privacy, Facebook users need to know that their most personal information is safe -- not only pictures but messages, contact information and, soon, credit card information with the launch of Facebook Wallet (actually, they already have credit card info through the gift app and ad platform).

    As per the second, Facebook's business depends on its ownership of the data it has collected. All of us in the business knows that data improves ad efficiency. So the more data I have, the better I can target. This is ultimately the driver of Facebook's business. So any company caught "stealing" Facebook data (or at least using it beyond the scope of the developers agreement without a direct agreement with Facebook) will be and should be shut down.

    Having said that, I have no idea if Slide was taking data. I know the guys at Slide. They are aggressive but fair, it seems. I can't speak intelligently about their systems. I do know others who are using data beyond the scope of Facebook's rules.

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