Uber-geek blogger Robert Scoble used a third party script to download his contact list from Facebook who then responded by deleting his account saying it violated the Terms of Use.
Now comes the hilarious part
I’m getting dozens of emails asking for my script. See, there’s a ton of people who WANT to be deleted from Facebook. So far Facebook has been denying them, saying it’s impossible to delete everything you’ve ever done from Facebook. Well, if you go over to Rodney Rumford’s blog you can see that’s totally hogwash. Facebook CAN totally delete you from Facebook IF IT WANTS!
Facebook has managed to shoot themselves in the foot again. Clearly, this is a company that does not get it – not about community, not about being responsive and listening to users, not about being open about what they’re doing – the list of their cluelessness just goes on and on.
Others do get it though.
Oh, and Jimmy Wales (the guy who founded Wikipedia) wrote me and said, about my attempts to get my own social data back: “This is the kind of thing that I would consider to be a *benefit to our customers* rather than a *threat to our business*.”
We need open standards for social networking sites. You should be able to get your info out of Facebook just as easily as they let you import contacts from GMail. After all, it’s your information, not theirs.