Plaxo invited blogger Robert Scoble to try an alpha version of a robot script (a program) that can grab specified fields from one's Facebook friends' profiles and export them (a process sometimes known as 'scraping'). Scoble duly ran the script. Facebook's servers detected the activity and sent him a message and inactivated his Facebook account. Scoble immediately blogged this, triggering a mini-firestorm of indignation. The Scoble brouhaha has had two useful outcomes. First, it has highlighted the speed with which the issue of privacy on social networking sites has become a can of worms. Second, it highlights the conflict between Facebook's 'walled garden' and those who seek to make social networking sites 'interoperable', ie, able to share data.
Read full story on The Guardian