I hate their walled garden set up! - Rob Sellen :o)

Rob, I think it's incredibly smart. They have a *huge* controlled environment to work in now. They'll open up, gradually, but people will all-of-the-sudden have the ability to finally opt-out of whatever they want, even on the "open" web. You can't opt-out of the open web with Google - only their private offerings. - Jesse Stay

For instance, you can create a robots.txt to prevent search engines from crawling your content, but that doesn't fully prevent indexing of everything - Jesse Stay

You can't specify which of your family and friends see your videos on Youtube as well - Jesse Stay

While I do see what you mean there, I still feel it's a bit lame having silly limits on how social you can be there while they show our own blogs in an Iframe...so it means people comment using it, not the blog itself... they take the piss really! - Rob Sellen :o)

Facebook has one unified system to control everything. Google will take awhile to get such a system in place. - Jesse Stay

you give to them...they take away from you... - Rob Sellen :o)

Rob, you can integrate your blog with Facebook outside of the Facebook.com domain as well. - Jesse Stay

The advantage is only those you want to see it can see it within the Facebook environment - you can make it entirely public, or entirely private. It's completely your choice. - Jesse Stay

Facebook still has its limits, but they've proven they're aware of those limits and continue to fix them. - Jesse Stay

I can't tell Google to only allow the content it indexes be available to just my family in its search results, for instance. - Jesse Stay

What you mean by that? integrate it outside of it? How do I do that? I post blog to it, but it still shows in the Iframe.. and most there don't think about closing the Iframe... that's lame... IMO. - Rob Sellen :o)

Shared 7 hours late, Jesse? http://friendfeed.com/louisgr... - Louis Gray

Rob, Facebook provides an entire API (Facebook Connect) for third-party websites. You don't need to import it into the Facebook environment if that is your concern. Simply let your blog publish links into Facebook, and track comments from there. Facebook gives you full control of that experience, and allows you to take it all back to your blog. - Jesse Stay

Louis, sorry, been a busy day - 2 hours of sleep last night and just now catching up on FriendFeed - Jesse Stay

Good. That means you're vulnerable, so as a bully, I will follow you around and point out your mistakes until you have a public meltdown. :) - Louis Gray

Louis this is normal for me so either I'm already having a public meltdown or things are just fine ;) - Jesse Stay

I see Jesse...thanks for explaining the API ... :o) - Rob Sellen :o)

Oh the other hand, Facebook search seems extremely deficient compared to FF. I could not find a way to search for a specific word in my stream. - Richard Walker

Richard, that's coming. It's those areas that Facebook still lacks, but have proven they are still very willing to expand. - Jesse Stay

wait... someone on friendfeed that doesn't hate facebook?? i like it :) - Frankie Warren

Frankie, I wrote 2 books on Facebook. I have to like it. :-) - Jesse Stay

Thanks Jesse .. now the other riddle is why Louis' "bully" comment is on BackType ... but is a FF thread comment, not part of a blog post. Is this an accident of where an item is found or something more gray and sinister ? :) (and no, people, don't start trash talking to get hits... It only caught my attention because it was atypical - at first glance anyway.) - Richard Walker

Matthew, Facebook is much more than just a walled environment though. My website is part of Facebook, for instance, but it's a completely open environment, no walls. Yet I can put up walls where I want to. - Jesse Stay

Richard, BackType indexes FriendFeed comments. If you have an alert for a term, it will be caught. - Louis Gray

Interesting... thanks, Louis. - Richard Walker

jesse.. how do you feel about the fact they stop you being social.. IE block you for being to social? how can that be a good thing? I have been blocked once from commenting... it lasted a week.. great move.. I help my friends on there alot.. yet get kicked in the teeth... - Rob Sellen :o)

Rob, they've got to get better at that. They have to do something though or spammers would rule the system like on Twitter. I have noticed fewer and fewer cases lately of suspended accounts though. - Jesse Stay

I can see your point there mate and agree with it, but I am NOT a spammer, I have been stopped twice from commenting, surely they knew the truth after the first time. their lack of clarity on "limits" on the FAQ page is pathetic... how do you stop going over a limit you are not even aware of? - Rob Sellen :o)