14 DAY TRIAL // Being very successful is what every company wants, but, for the few that actually achieve this, things start getting stickier. IBM, Intel, Microsoft, they've all had to face the problems of being the largest players in a market with anti-trust investigations and countless lawsuits from competing companies. It doesn't get any better for Internet companies either, and Google knows it best, so the fact that Facebook, the largest social network in the world by a safe margin, is being countersued by Power.com, a social network aggregator, shouldn't surprise anyone.
It all started in December 2008, when Facebook sued Power.com for scraping user data from its pages, but also for storing Facebook login credentials. Power.com launched in August last year, and allowed users to import their data and profile information from social networks like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. This was accomplished using the social networks' APIs whenever possible, but also by scraping the data available at the sites. This last part isn't viewed very well by most social networks and, along with the fact that Power.com stored Facebook users' passwords, is what prompted the social network to sue the company.
Power.com has removed Facebook from its list of supported services since the lawsuit, but is now countersuing Facebook.com, to force it to become more open with the data. The company does bring out some strong points, ones that have been used before in similar cases, arguing that users should own the data they create and that they should be able to share it in every way they see fit. CEO Steve Vachani also brings forth the argument that the issue is similar to how phone carriers acted before number portability was made mandatory to prevent vendor lock-in.
While Facebook may be right in wanting to protect user data, there may be more at stake here than just the users' best interest, as the “walled garden” approach has made Facebook the giant it is today, and allowing third-parties to make use of the Facebook credentials may also prove detrimental to Facebook Connect, the company's login standard that has seen an increased adoption recently.