I agree with Jeff re the effectiveness of Facebooks just do it/fix it approach. But despite their success I doubt they are (and hope they are not) the are the way of the future (unless they change their approach).

They try to keep everything on their platform and hopefully the combined expertise of the rest of us will be able to create something more compelling. I believe the future will be separate, loosely coupled, linked web apps. I am working on one and trying to make it as open as I can:

http://localhero.biz/

Communicating why the mistakes were made, how they are going to fix them, and, as you said, responding quickly to those mistakes, is as important as learning from those mistakes.

It seems like Facebook (and I’m fan as well) is simply being guided by a maxim employed for ages by savvy teenagers, maverick military men and a fair number of intrepid reporters. Called by some “Stuart’s Law of Retroaction,” this principle states:

“It is easier to ask forgiveness than to get permission.” (Also stated, maybe a bit more succinctly–and accurately?– as “It is easier to GET forgiveness than permission.”

Cheers,
George

Yes, it was a violation of Facebook’s uber-restrictive ToS, and Plaxo isn’t exactly Mother Teresa, but doesn’t it disturb you that Facebook only wants its “openness” to flow in one direction (i.e., into Facebook)? FB will bend over backwards to help me scrape out all of my contact information from my Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, and countless other accounts, but they get mighty unhelpful when you want to get all of that social networky goodness back out again from theirs.

Facebook reminds me of the old Sands casino in Atlantic City - they had this moving walkway that whisked you away from the Boardwalk and onto their gaming floor, but as many a hapless tourist learned the hard way, it was a one-way trip (God, I hated that place!)…

I might also remind you that what you refer to as “your” data is actually what you’ve already chosen to share on your FB profile. What exactly is the difference between running a script like Plaxo does and keying all of those email addresses into a contact manager by hand? I get your email address either way.

It’s tough to reach people, and companies spend a lot of money trying to reach us. When they screw up, we all want to hear what they have to say. More often than not, Facebook has gone on to say the right thing (to their benefit).

It’s not a very coherent strategy, but it seems to be working

It will be interesting to see what happens when/if companies embrace Google’s OpenSocial - and if a collective group will penetrate Facebook’s armor.

http://www.praized.com/blog/social-networks/i-am-now-a-blockbuster-spokesperson/