Setting the stage for today's Gillmor Gang, which starts at about 4 p.m. at http://live.twit.tv - Robert Scoble

I think you lost me with the first sentance: "Twitter has done something really remarkable: they have made the entire database of Tweets available to other companies." Select other companies, sure, but it's certainly not "open" - Ken Sheppardson

Ken: it's not totally open, but it sure is a lot more open than Facebook is. Do you know anyone who has the right to get to my Facebook profile updates? I don't, and that's a HUGE difference between Twitter's approach. - Robert Scoble

Ken: it comes down to "who owns my data?" Can I give Twitter permission to see all my Facebook updates? How about Flickr access to my photos? How about Wordpress for other stuff? No? So, do I really own my data or does Facebook? - Robert Scoble

Yeah, I'm settling back in to read the rest, but after nearly a year of trying to get at the full feed from Twitter, I'm just a little jumpy. - Ken Sheppardson

I just joined friendfeed - still trying to figure out what it does. - Colleen O'Donnell Pierce

Colleen: it does a lot. Aggregates. Lets you share stuff with your friends. Is a social network. Is a search engine. is a content-distribution system. We're all still trying to figure it out. - Robert Scoble

Yes, but Twitter is the same compared to FriendFeed...FF rocks! ;) - Nicola Junior Vitto

It's not about defaults, it's about ownership. On Facebook, you are not allowed to give other people access to your data, because your data belongs to Facebook. On FriendFeed or Twitter, you can choose to be public or private, but either way you can still access your data and do what you want with it. - Paul Buchheit

Ken: Twitter puts a lot of restrictions on how friendfeed uses that full feed, too. They can only share stuff in public when people subscribe and add in Twitter here. - Robert Scoble

Coleen, FriendFeed is like a one stop megastore of all your social networking and information sources - rob

"..until after I could change user expectations and get people to build a public instance of themselves. That could take a couple of years." -- Why would that take so long.?.a technology / data portability issue? Not sure about that. - George Dearing

George: when I tried importing my Tweets into Facebook I got a lot of hate mail. The usage model there is VERY strong and hard to change. That's going to be a noose around Zuckerberg's neck unless he figures out some way to get around it. - Robert Scoble

agreed - mediaeater

If only 2009 could be the year the phrase "own my data" dies. The way it's used these days it's as if only one party can "own" something that's intangible, has zero replication cost, and can exist in more than one place at a time. I get that you can have *rights* to access data, reproduce it, and distribute it under our current intellectual property laws, but talking about "data ownership" really just obfuscates a bunch of issues we should be dealing with more directly. - Ken Sheppardson

Ken, regardless of what words you use, the concept of whether I own/control/have-access-to/have-rights-to/etc my data is a very important question. For me personally, if I put my information into a service, then I want the right and ability to copy it back out. This is why Gmail included POP3 access from the start -- your data should not be held hostage. - Paul Buchheit

Paul: That's the Biggest point Right There: "you are not allowed to give other people access to your data" Exactly.Unless they're my friends, they can't have access to anything I put there (status updates are changed, I can RT those out of Tweetdeck and Peoplebrowsr) -It's not totally an "ownership" argument, but as Ken say a "rights" argument. I should have the right to allow public access to my data. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

On Facebook I can give a small subset (Friends & Networks and maybe Friends of Friends access, but if I want to, say, share my email address and screen names and phone numbers with the public, "everyone" on Facebook -I'm screwed. I can't do it. And I certainly can't share my comments and likes with the world either. This is why I use Facebook mostly for keeping in touch with IRL friends rather than networking with new ones. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Paul: Bingo... I want to talk about rights to reproduce and redistribute. Not some sort of pseudo-exclusive "ownership", as if it can only live in place X or place Y. - Ken Sheppardson

To be clear, while Twitter has some default rate-limits on their API, and restricts access to the full public "firehose" to select partners (mostly for scalability reasons, I believe), I've never heard of a case where they haven't allowed a third-party app to make as many API calls as necessary when done at a user's request. I.e., if someone wanted to write a Twitter export tool and a user triggered the request, they'd let you. This is good. - DeWitt Clinton

I agree with that Paul. No one should hold my data hostage. Regardless of the "ownership" - the "Possession is 9/10ths" argument comes into play. If I cannot "posses" the data, then effectively, I don't really own it, no matter what the ToS says. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Rob, that is exactly what I was about to say. Thanks for saving me some typing :-) So, recent ToS changes mean I keep my copyright on all the stuff I post to FB, but if I want to move that stuff somewhere else I have two hopes, and one of them (used to) play golf... Result? I post my stuff elsewhere and it's FB that actually loses out on being able to display that content. (Not that it's *that* good but, y'know, maybe one day it might be :) ) - Andy Bold

I know it's just semantics, but using terms like "owning" and "moving" is sorta like nails on a chalkboard to me. ;-) - Ken Sheppardson

Exactly Andy..Facebook loses out on me posting the content there. The only things I post there, for the most part are the Status updates and links that post back out here to FriendFeed where I can easily share them with the world. As FriendFeed (hopefully) adds more outbound services besides Twitter, I will use that more and more. And then I will feel like the information I want to put out to the world is REALLY getting there. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Ken, I own the copyright, and if I decide to store my stuff somewhere else then I need to move it. I know what you mean though :-) I just wish somebody would inject some caffeine into Facebook, and remind them that walled gardens are soooooo 2003 ;-) - Andy Bold

got it..it's obviously hard to predict how fast FB's usage model will evolve..i guess that underscores why some user's Facebook interaction is so 1-way..for me, the only time I'm really creating content for Facebook (alone) is from the iPhone app..and that's mostly mobile uploads and light news viewing..you're right tho..if they give config capabilities around what's exposed, my "I only use it for personal stuff" description would change. - George Dearing

Privacy > * - Ryan Merket

Rob - I've been using Friendfeed for about two weeks now. I think it does two things extremely well. 1) Aggregate my 'stuff' from wherever I choose to store it right now, and 2) Promotes conversation about that 'stuff'. I think it is very close to being 'the one place' where I can come, see what people are up to, and (eventually) post a single status update that goes out to wherever I choose. Even to Facebook ;-) (Sorry - 3 things - search is also fantastic here. hashtag-schmashtag-is all I have to say ;-) - Andy Bold

Ryan: I am on the opposite end of that spectrum these days.......Publicity > * - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Andy: Right on. Those are all the reasons why I love FriendFeed, and spen more time here than anywhere else. A mobile client would make me be here all the time. RE: Hashtags see this http://beta.friendfeed.com/scoblei... and make up your mind. I don't totally agree. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

And if I could post a single status update that wnet out to Facebook, Twitter, ping.fm, identi.ca, blellow, plurk, and a host of other site, I would be ecstatic - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

I'm pretty new to FF - but since I started using it I've become very exited about the posibility to post news that I find interesting on all my services - FB and Twitter are the primary ones (I would love Ping.fm integration in FF). I hope the new additions to the FB API will eventually give me the posibility to share select items from FB to FF and thru that share it with the world. FB doesn't really work for telling the world what u like or what u think is interesting since it's closed viewer wise. - Kevin Nordmand

A transition from the closed data to the open data model could be an opt-in procedure when u autorize new apps that want to publish your stuff. - Kevin Nordmand

Integration of comments between FF and FB would be perfect. - Kevin Nordmand

Rob, that is my Friendfeed Nirvana :-) And Kevin, that is why I think Facebook will start to lose eyeballs. Or, at least, the kind of eyeballs that I see here at FF - currently mostly technically literate people who want to keep in touch with their less technically literate social circle who are out there at Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, etc. Which is the only reason I have for keeping a FB account, to be honest... And ditto - my FB time has pretty much disappeared since FF beta was loosed on the world :-) - Andy Bold

@Andy I agree since I found FF my FB time has plumited. This is where the information is! - Kevin Nordmand

I don't know that Facebook is going to lose people, but the rate of increase is and will decline there, as will the average minutes per user per day. I am quite sure that my behavior and that of my friends is an indicator of not only that, but that the opposite is true for FriendFeed - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

FB is just impossible. I hate it because it slices things up (walls them off--literally!) in a way that is utterly inelegant. Every improvement makes it worse. Urgh. - Kathy Fitch

And today when I log into Facebook, I see they added the "EVERYONE" option for sharing my content. hmmmm.....Sorry I missed the show this afternoon. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

I remember writing a blog post almost a year ago regarding FB's 3rd party applications and how they were turning the platform into the next chain-letter/spam vector. Even more so today I believe and the new interface doesn't help because you are continuously feed information that you don't necessarily want... - Thomas V. Fischer

If search is the gold mine you suggest, and everyone's data is fed into the same big search pool, how will companies be able to control their piece of the search engine pie? - Spotcher

Carver Mead says, "Listen to the Technology. What's the Technology trying to tell you?" I think the internet is definitely demanding to be open, at least in the Social Media context. I think the technology is telling us Open, Granularity, Ease of Use, but still infinite power under the hood. - Web Nex

They have a lot coming down the pike. http://www.neowin.net/news... - Adi