While it might sound like I’m going to rant about world peace, there is another kind of harmony that I am writing about … harmony in technology. I suppose I need to elaborate a bit more, so you too can understand the dilemma. We all have embraced the information technology age to a lesser or greater extent … in fact, it now even has invaded our social lives. While this is all a good thing, the problem is that our social lives have become fragmented.
In order to explain the issue, I can illustrate with the following … I have 3 friends on Windows Live Messenger (MSN), 2 friends on Google Talk, 1 friend on AIM, a couple of friends on Skype … and then quite a few friends on Facebook. I also had 2 friends on ICQ, but they switched to other systems. The issue is this … in order to chat with all my friends, I need to have Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk, AIM, and Skype installed and running on my computer, and I need to have Facebook open in a browser … well, at least if I want to chat with my friends.
You might be quick to point out that there a several systems which do allow you to chat with people on other services … but, have you ever tried them? A while back, I decided that I was going to reduce the clutter on my laptop by using one of these systems. I tried several of these systems and found that in several cases, I couldn’t get it to work, in other cases the support for other services was several crippled and limited. In the end, I realized that the only way I was going to access to all functionality was to run all the systems … which has been very upsetting ever since.
It is a much broader issue, which not only affects chat systems, but also affects most other aspects of online activity. These are 2 issues which are causing this information technology chaos. The first issue is a lack of standardization … while there are many bodies working towards standardization, and in some cases even official standards … it still appears as though most companies still have their own flavours of the standard … and most companies try to persuade others that theirs is the better one. The second is a lack of openness. The issue lies in this … all the systems are punting their own product. Everyone wants theirs to appear to be the best in their field … so they are all very protective of system, protocol, API … you name it.
While the software houses are quick to point out that they are endeavouring to give the end user the best product … the problem is that in the real world, it is the end user who suffers. It is the end user who has to run 10 systems to do the work that 1 system could do. Why in the world must I run 5 chat systems to chat with my friends? Everyone has got their personal preference, which is why one finds plenty of users on all systems, but should this choice of system really be a limiting factor? Currently, choice is very limiting.
These issues are not confined to a single platform either, because I have found similar issues in other places as well. For example, my smartphone has integrated Facebook. The idea is amazing … contacts in my address book are linked to friends on Facebook … their birthdays appear in my calendar … their status updates appear in individual newsfeeds under their contacts … their photos appear in individual albums under the contacts. Overall, the whole idea is great … and at first it all appeared to work very well, in a very usable way. But I soon discovered that it was all flawed. I found that lots of photos and albums are hidden, in many cases, newsfeeds do not show
After a bit of investigation, I discovered that the issue lies not so much with my phone or with the Facebook integration app, but rather with Facebook. As soon as friends have their privacy settings set to “Friends Only”, then photos do not show, nor the newsfeeds. While I could fully understand this privacy protection if the data is being accessed anonymously … this isn’t the case, because in order to use the Facebook integration, one has to provide Facebook login credentials. I tried several other smartphone apps for Facebook, and in all the cases, friends with “Friends Only” security settings are effectively “hidden”.
I realized that it is Facebook that is determining that if a user is accessing data from any means besides from the Facebook website, then they cannot access anything that is set to “Friends Only” … even for people who actually are friends on Facebook. I guess this is also Facebook punting their product. They have spent a major amount of money developing and maintaining the website, and so they rather prefer having you access the social network from their website. And if you’d rather use some other system, then they will remind you all the time that you should rather use the website, but limiting the access you get. Sure, they do have revenue streams from adverts on the website, which they might feel a need to protect, but there are other options for generating revenue streams.
As pointed out by Andrew Binstock in the Editor’s Note of Dr Dobb’s Update of 3 February 2011, this issue even extends to the often idolized ‘cloud’ … “it is becoming apparent that one of the most serious limitations of cloud computing is the lack of common APIs”. This brings me back to the title of my article … why can’t we just live in harmony?
I share the same sentiment. Personally I chose to support FOSS and open standards as a matter of principle, even if there is sometimes a bit of a cost involved. I've been running Ubuntu exclusively for about 5 years now. But even Canonical sometimes functions in ways that are closed or restrictive.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the issue with the Facebook app is that so many 3rd party apps deal unscrupulously with people's personal details. Is it really a "friend" who is busy accessing another friends' posts, or is the information being harvested by the 3rd party app for more "sinister" use later?
I suppose that is another factor that systems like Facebook need to deal with, the harvesting of personal information by unscrupulous third party apps. I do, however, think that based on the process involved in getting access to the Facebook API ... this "gap" in security is in some ways closed. In the end, the question is ... allow users to choose, or censor who and what can access the data. In the end ... is there anyone one really can trust anyway?
ReplyDelete