What Facebook Doesn’t Want You To Know.

Friday, January 15, 2010

facebookevil Clearly anyone who signs up with FB is not that interested in their privacy. Though for many it is a necessary evil, that admittedly also presents some tangible benefits. Many use Facebook for business, I’ve found that the amount of silly forwarded emails I receive has dropped exponentially, people seem to wish to post these things instead and for me…that’s wonderful. I’ve seen a near complete separation between my work and personal life in my multiple email boxes owing to the fact that most people simply send me private messages on FB now. And I love the birthday reminders.

But privacy issues exist and I’m not sure I trust one company with all this information. This week, however, Facebook has shown a confounding spitefulness with an iPhone app.

A mere two days after the release of defriended, an app that for the low price of $.99 let you know when someone “unfriended” you, it is no longer available. Despite the recent resignation of the Facebook for iPhone app developer, Joe Hewitt, Facebook immediately put a halt to Defriended..”While we cannot remove an application running on another website or platform, we will ensure that applications that access Facebook user data adhere to Facebook Platform policies,” the company said. ABC News reports that Apple then pulled it from the App Store, whether or not at the request of the developer, i-Doodz, is less certain.

To me it’s pretty clear when I’ve been “unfriended” but a dollar is not a lot of money to know exactly when. So it does, or did, have some marginal utility.

But why block this? Facebook chooses not to share when these “unfriendings” occur in any sort of notification, fine, but an actual attack on those who would develop an app to inform people to whom this matters is at best..bizarre.

Perhaps the people at Facebook realize they will never monetize the site and don’t want others to make a profit when they can’t. Sure they can sell off parts of the company for heaps of money, but actually turn a profit. Never.

This is an article by The Apps Machine.