INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Twitter, Vine, Voxer, MessageMe
social graph by convincing people to upload their Gmail contacts
alternatives to Facebook and letting consumers choose where to social network
bring your phone number with you to a new network.The two most powerful ways to do this would be for Facebook to stop, or Congress to stop
And Facebook should change its Download Your Information tool to export our friend list in a truly interoperable format
books so they could add them as Facebook friends
But it refused to let users export the email addresses of their friends to use elsewhere
But it is blatant data portability hypocrisy for Facebook to encourage users to import that data from other apps but not export it.In some
Facebook is already enduring criticism about how it handled data privacy in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.Yet the idea that
you could find your Facebook friends on other apps is a legitimate reason for the platform to exist
But Facebook has rescinded that option when it senses true competition.Data protectionism
Twitter is the biggest example
also enable people to easily share their experiences back with people on Facebook.You may not use Facebook Platform to promote, or to export
user data to, a product or service that replicates a core Facebook product or service without our permission.Essentially, apps that
Yet if they start to grow into potential rivals, Facebook has swiftly enforced this policy and removed their Find Friends access, often
inhibiting further growth and engagement.
Here are few of examples of times Facebook has cut off competitors from its graph:Voxer was one of
the hottest messaging apps of 2012, climbing the charts and raising a $30 million round with its walkie-talkie-style functionality
In early January 2013, Facebook copied Voxer by adding voice messaging into Messenger
Katis told us he thought that was hypocritical
By June, Voxer had pivoted toward business communications, tumbling down the app charts and leaving Facebook Messenger to thrive.MessageMe
The app ended up selling for a paltry double-digit millions price tag to Yahoo before disintegrating.Phhhoto and its fate show how
Six months later, Instagram launched Boomerang, a blatant clone of Phhhoto
Within two years, Phhhoto shut down its app, blaming Facebook and Instagram
could create a moat around Facebook
Facebook should pledge to stop banning competitors from using its Find Friends tool
You can export your photos that can be easily uploaded elsewhere
No link to their Facebook profile
friends have common names
There are tons of John Smiths on Facebook, so finding him on another social network with just a name will require a lot of sleuthing, or
Depending on where you live, locating a particular Garcia, Smirnov or Lee could be quite difficult
Facebook even built a short-lived feature called Friendshake to help you friend someone nearby amongst everyone in their overlapping name
space.When I asked about this, Facebook told me that users can opt-in to having their email or phone number included in the Download Your
But this privacy setting is buried and little-known
Just 4 percent of my friends, centered around tech savvy San Francisco, had enabled it.As I criticized way back in 2010 when Download Your
data portability of your friend connections
Facebook username and URL
But true portability would mean you could upload the list to another social network to find your friends there.One option would be for
Facebook could build a hashed email lookup tool so that if you uploaded these nonsensical strings of characters to another app, they could
Effectively, this would let you find friends elsewhere via email address without Facebook ever giving you or other apps a human-readable
Opening up the social graph would require Facebook to compete on the merit of its product and policies
