Thursday, January 03, 2008

Scoble kicked off Facebook due to Plaxo Pulse

Well known blogger Robert Scoble/Scobleizer was kicked off Facebook yesterday. According to Scoble's blog he was using an alpha version of Plaxo Pulse. Well I don't have the latest version of Plaxo Pulse like Scoble but the beta of Plaxo Pulse 3.0 is starting to make me consider paying for the Premium version of Plaxo Pulse. But I think $49.95/yr. is high once again when you compare it to Flickr which gives you unlimited storage and bandwidth for $24.95/yr. I know apples and oranges as far as the type of service but I think Plaxo needs to think about price points and where users will buy in. In general $20-$30/yr. to me seems to be a good price point, when you get to $50/yr. I have to really want whatever it is.

Anyway back to Scoble and Facebook, if Plaxo Pulse and the harvesting of information Plaxo does gets you kicked off Facebook, then Facebook is going to be losing more than a few customers in my opinion once the new version of Plaxo is released. Also there is a movement to get Scoble reinstated on Facebook and popular opinion is it's only a matter of time before Robert Scoble is reinstated. Another interesting side note - some Facebook users actually want to be deleted/wiped from Facebook but in the past Facebook has claimed that can't be done. Well obviously that's not the case since Scoble has been completely removed according to those who had access to him on Facebook.

Last I wonder if Facebook may have shot themselves in both feet with this move. What if Facebook rushed to remove Scoble and oops forgot to think ahead about the backlash and then having to restore his id but in removing his id made no provisions/backups needed for reinstatement. bang bang - more negative PR if word gets out you don't do proper backups.

PS to Facebook - your view is Robert Scoble violated your TOS but you might want to consider the negative PR your recent actions and new features have generated in the past few months. If you just want buzz well then your doing a great job but some how I'm guessing that's not the case.

Update: Scoble's Facebook account has been restored this afternoon. Of interest is the fact that in Facebook's response to Scoble they take the path that they view this activity as a possible malicious script. No indication or reaction to the fact that Scoble was using a Plaxo tool to scrap data. Also Facebook indicates that an automated process disabled Scoble's account, so if other Facebook users want to be removed they just need to find a script to scrap all the data they can find under there Facebook account. I am glad to see that Facebook has the means to restore an account when it get's wiped by the automated script detection bot. Now it will be interesting to see how the data portability aspects of this event play out. If your interested in data portability and the associated issues go over to dataportability.org

No comments: