Facebook Sues Power.com for Not Using Facebook Connect
Posted by Kristen Nicole on January 2nd, 2009 4:59 PM
Just last month Brazil-based Power.com launched a social networking aggregator that brought together your activity from across Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, and Hi5, to name a few. But just weeks after revealing its putlic beta, Power.com is being sued by none other than Facebook itself.
As a social networking aggregator Power.com doesn’t appear to be doing anything wrong, but the way in which it’s accessing Facebook user data is non-compliant with Facebook’s terms. According to The New York Times, Facebook has spent over a month in discussions with Power.com to try to reach an agreement in regards to accessing user data, but no agreement could be reached. As a result, Facebook has filed a complaint against Power.com in Unied Sates Disctrict Court in San Jose, California, for copyright and trademark infringement, unlawful competition and violation of the computer fraud and abuse act, among other charges.
So far, Power.com has removed Facebook as one of the accessible social networks through its service, but the issue of privacy and user data access remains. As Power.com requests Facebook users’ login information and allegedly saves this data, along with sending messages to users through its service and making them appear to be coming from the Facebook Team, Facebook insists that such actions compromise privacy and security measures that are supposed to protect users and maintain Facebook’s own integrity.
But one aspect of Facebook’s complaint against Power.com is particularly interesting, as it asserts that Power.com is participating in unlawful competition with the popular social network. In our initial coverage of Power.com’s beta launch, we asked the question “is Power.com too late to compete with Facebook Connect?” Facebook’s own platform, Facebook Connect, offers a way for third party services and applications to combine the activity of both Facebook and their own site for an integrated and social way in which to use existing information a user has already entered on Facebook.
So taking advantage of Facebook Connect seems like a pretty simple solution to Power.com’s problem. However, the well-funded startup looks to integrate your Facebok activity even deeper than what Facebook Connect already offers, providing application updates and more for an overarching access option to nearly all of your Facebook activity–not just a two-way news feed. And while none of the other available social networks like MySpace seem to be complaining about Power.com’s tactics for enabling users to sign in and access certain data, losing the support of Facebook could really hurt Power.com’s appeal to global users.
Other Power.com competitors such as Flock have already gained the support and partnership of some social networks like MySpace.com, instituting Flock as an accepted third pary option for end users. If Power.com loses the cooperation of the social networks, it could really end up being left in the dust.
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So in conclusion facebook takes but never gives.
And about your login credential in power.com, that is up to me to give my password not facebook
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For me this is proof that facebook is destined to fail; that social networking will be a ubiquitous feature rather than a destination in 5 years; and that Google FriendConnect / OpenSocial will triumph. You heard it here.
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The press release (http://diamond-back.com/icqlies3.html) at the time said it was a "Fast-Growing Web Community with 12 Million Registered Users Worldwide". But, history showed it was a feature and not a community.
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Evolution: MIRABILIS --> ICQ --> AIM --> GAIM --> PIDGIN
Pidgin is an open source program, a chat and messaging client which supports many protocols, eg: * AIM * Bonjour * Gadu-Gadu * Google Talk * Groupwise * ICQ * IRC * MSN * MySpaceIM * QQ * SILC * SIMPLE * Sametime * XMPP * Yahoo! * Zephyr.
Now it is a free download, and open source code, and can be modified further. Great!
As much as Facebook or any one company wants to try to 'lock users in' to using their software or APIs etc... This is not in the users best interest, only the company. For the user, the best solution is a widely accepted open standard, that anyone can use without relying on a single company.
OpenID Anyone?
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