A New (Old) Social Media Rule

I’ve been following the whole Scoble / Facebook blogstorm today. As one of Scoble’s “Facebook 5000” I have to say, I’m a little miffed that he felt entitled to scrape all his contacts’ personal data out of Facebook and drop it into Plaxo.

It gets to the nature of our connection and what exactly “friending” means between people who don’t have a pre-existing offline relationship. I wouldn’t care if one of my real-life friends decided to grab my email address out of Facebook and put it into their Outlook address book, for example. So why am I annoyed that Scoble did it? Because 1) he’s not a real life friend and 2) he didn’t ask first.

Seems to me it’s time to remind folks that, just as in the real world:

Don’t take more than you’re given. And if you’re not sure what the line is, ask first.

If you give your next-door neighbor a set of keys to your home, that doesn’t give them the right to walk in unannounced any time they feel like it. They still need to ask your permission. So too in the online world. Just because someone ‘friends’ you online does not give you an unlimited right to do as you like with their contact information. Yes, it’s annoying to have to manually re-friend people if you move from one social application to another, but it’s the polite – and the right – thing to do.

Allen Stern seems to feel the same way. And of course, Loren Feldman‘s take on things is blunt and touches on another troubling aspect to this — why was Scoble doing Plaxo’s testing for them?

UPDATE: The inimitable Lisa B over at Bruce Clay did a much better job of getting the point across than I did.

Happy New Year!

This was the view from my terrace tonight. A fantastic, colorful sunset to close out the year:

NYE Sunset

A friend is coming over a little later, and we’ll have snacks, some champagne, maybe play some Wii or watch a movie. A nice quiet New Year’s with all the important things: good friends, good food, family, and some fun.

2007 was an up-and-down, “two steps forward one step back” kind of year in some ways, but on the other hand, I have my health, my family, my friends, and the great good fortune to live in a place and time where my destiny is changeable and under my own control. When I start thinking too much about the bad things, I need to remember that.

Thanks to all my readers for stopping by and sharing a part of your life, however small, with me. I hope you’ll be back in 2008. I’m looking forward to what happens next.

Netscape end-of-lifed

Those of us who’ve been around long enough to remember Netscape’s birth will feel a little sad to hear that it’s finally reached the end of the line:

AOL’s focus on transitioning to an ad-supported web business leaves little room for the size of investment needed to get the Netscape browser to a point many of its fans expect it to be. Given AOL’s current business focus and the success the Mozilla Foundation has had in developing critically-acclaimed products, we feel it’s the right time to end development of Netscape branded browsers, hand the reigns fully to Mozilla and encourage Netscape users to adopt Firefox.

I first downloaded a copy of Netscape some time in 1995. What a long, strange trip it’s been since then.

At least we still have Firefox.