So. Looks like this has turned into more of a cautionary tale. I brought this upon myself. Shortly after this post I received a message from someone at Bigsight, asking if I had used the FriendCSV or MakeMyHomepage apps on Facebook. Yeah… I remember using that after looking for a quick way to kick start a guest list. It actually did clear some things up because based on some poking around for the previous post it looked like they were just culling data. Turns out I just wasn’t paying attention. If anything thanks for letting me know I should be more careful! I guess I took the known and trusted Facebook and assumed the app could also be trusted.
So, I take a look at the application page just to see what I missed.
Yep, it’s right there at the bottom. They even sent a followup email that I didn’t read close enough. This is in the email with the CSV file they’ll email you, “If you don’t already have a page on bigsight.org, the web’s people directory, we will create a basic page for you to get you started. You’ll receive an email about this in a few minutes.”
Curious, I take a look at their other Facebook apps.
Now, it’s absolutely my fault I wasn’t paying attention and got something out of it that I didn’t really care for, but that’s the thing. My take is that’s what they’re banking on. The other two apps don’t say a thing about what they do and the FriendCSV app is slightly misleading and also the one they’re putting all their effort in to. It’s advertised as an app that’ll give you a spreadsheet list of my friends with a small little note about creating your bigsight profile tacked on at the end. So if you read the first part, the functionality sounds good, you might not make it to the end. Can’t remember seeing the “option” of creating the page either.
If you’re trying to build a social networking site and the main driver of profile creation is done by attaching it to a facebook app whose SECONDARY function is to leech that data, that might not be the best way to do it. It’s bound to tick people off and just because it may not violate the facebook TOS doesn’t mean that people are going to be ok with it. Even if you did see that a bigsight profile would be created for you, it’s not exactly clear what it is or that it could potentially be taking facebook only data to the web. I still say questionable. Eh… whatever.
Reading the comments on either techcrunch articles is mildly interesting, you can see what others and the devs are saying.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/23/with-friendcsv-data-sneaks-out-facebooks-back-door/
