The brand is great for B2C customers, but its almost like a Ponzi Scheme. They’re not offering a B2B2C play that strengthens the B2C connections, thereby satisfying and creating a bond with B2B customers — they’re shifting bargain-seeking customers around B2B customers in a down economy. The general attitudes among consumers are creating loyalty to GroupOn for finding new deals, not finding a new favorite (or occassional ) retailer . The other deal sites tend to create better b2b sentiment.

If the expansion to Europe had a strong repeat business, long term contracts or ones with an anti-competiive clause — then it makes sense. Right now though, GroupOn just seems like a fad that anyone with a large marketing budget could obliterate by making more retailer-friendly programs.

From: http://developer.yahoo.com/maps/ajax/V3.8/index.html#YGeoPoint

getCenterLatLon Returns the lat/lon pair corresponding to the center of the map. Return value: YGeoPoint object

Running: var geoPoint = map.getCenterLatLon();

Wouldn’t one expect to get back, oh, say, a YGeoPoint object? I’ve been getting ‘undefined’ for over an hour, with no real recourse to figure this out. I suspect I need to capture an event, like you’re doing here, but that’s not what the (limited) docs indicate. Or am I just reading it wholly wrong?

I have had the misfortune of being pitched ‘customer service outsourcing solutions’ from Indian firms ad-nauseam over the years. They’re all atrocious.

1- They often have language problems. They often understand ‘british’ english and official dialects, but do not understand american terms or idioms.

2- They often have NO idea what the technology / product is. Their job as bottom/middle tier customer service is to search a database for prepared statements based on keywords, or walk people through a script. That isn’t customer service, its ‘customer management’ and creating an illusion of expectations.

Your allusions to NASA and high-tech are irrelevant. There are lots of smart people in India — but just like every other country there are even more dumb ones there, and bad american tech and retail companies tend to offshore their customer relations to that population.

And, FWIW – I have several close friends who are Indian by heritage or nationality. They hate offshored customer service too.

There indeed exists a complex domain logic and publication — which creates the ‘Read your Contracts’ TOS and Copyright legal issues you mention. ( BTW, did i toss you the working copy of my social media best practices doc ?)

I don’t think DataPortability could solve this – or should solve this – which is why I didn’t bring it up ( well, in passing mentioning a paper, but not otherwise) The issue is that Facebook has positioned itself by saying “We should be your new addressbook and photo management application”, but then decided who I can connect to on it. While its their prerogative to do so, it seriously undermines their utilty. Porting my facebook social graph to any other network would never solve this – it would just migrate the problem.

Facebook didn’t assert ownership of my Social Graph in terms of them being the ones who control where it lies, they asserted ownership by deleting the relations and information on it. The large question isn’t over ownership concerns in migrating people to/from Facebook – but from going in and manipulating my data within the network.

I see that there are two solutions:

• Anything a person puts into an application or is sent to you by others, should be able to pull out. This is a best-practices recommendation I give to all clients. This doesn’t relate to data derived from analysis and algorithms ( my top 10 recommendations ), but that if I upload a photo or someone sends me their contact details, it should be mine.

• People shouldn’t use Facebook or anything else as a replacement for communications and addressbook functionality. People need look past advertising and marketing. ‘Portability’ isn’t a solution to this – it just ports the underlying problems: all of these networks are and always will be walled gardens — not in relation to portability, but because its their turf — and they decide on the rules. Facebook deserves the right to make decisions like this, that is undeniable — and because they have that right, they should never be relied on.

If a social network cost $100 a year to join, and if you don’t pay up all your info is held hostage, you’d say screw that and use other software. And if you found out that by-design, every online software is like that… and the only reliable way is to get a dayplanner and manage it yourseld – you’d get one. That’s this situation and my argument.

And you know I stopped being just-an engineer a long time ago ;( I’m a more of the entrepreneur / consultant for years. At least that pays way more of my bills than architecting systems.

I see the write-ops on such systems not as service invocation but as content publication – but not ‘dumb’ publication. Facebook is not an FTP server. Rather, writing on FB is publication of content (a statement of friendship, a photograph, etc) into a machine with its own read and write domain logic and operations. You grant access to the machine. No take backs. But you’re free to criticize the UX all day.

I don’t see anything wrong in what they did, though I do see something terribly impractical. You’ve called them out on the very real burden created by HOW they purge data, but you’ve done it slightly wrong. You’ve done it like the folks on the DataPortability lists. Instead of focusing on nuts and bolts pragmatism, you’ve invoked righteousness by discussing their “ownership” of “[your] Social Graph.” (No take backs, kids! Read your contracts!)

Ignore that shit. Don’t fall into the nonsensical jibba jabba about ownership of data or graphs or blah blah blah. Don’t become a “join table portability” robot. Instead, leverage the power of a consumer who accepts that what Facebook did was 100% legal and within their domain but wants to point out that among the available (legal) choices, they chose a bad one.

Stick with the 90% of this post that is spot on. Point out how the UX (which is the outcome of the machine) was hurt by the functioning of their purge policy. Leave out the bigger, useless rhetorical statements about ownership. It’s below you.

At least, until you get that law degree. At that point, you can discuss publishing rights, copyright, and “ownership” all you want.

Until you’re a lawyer, you’re an engineer, and engineers don’t give a shit about whiney “ownership” nonsense.

This is a great article and I love your thinking! I thought the phrase “Did you back it up?” was so 90s. And I would have usually answered that with yes, “I have it on facebook.”

Thanks again!

For OpenID we’ve spent time working with a large group of community members — both big and small — to develop an IPR policy and process for OpenID specifications. These are designed to ensure that contributors do not have any hidden patents over finalized specifications. You can learn a bit more about some of this finished work at http://openid.net/2007/12/31/openid-intellectual-property-policy-approved/. The current finalized OpenID specifications have been covered by non-assertion agreements executed by various contributors (http://openid.net/ipr/Non-Assertion-Agreement/executed/) as well as all of the companies which are members of the OpenID Foundation’s board. This means that individuals to some of the largest companies on the web have pledged to help ensure that OpenID is free to implement and not encumbered by patents.

Hopefully this helps provide some insight into what the OpenID community is doing to help fulfill Brad Fitzpatrick’s original statement, “Nobody should own this. Nobody’s planning on making any money from this. The goal is to release every part of this under the most liberal licenses possible, so there’s no money or licensing or registering required to play. It benefits the community as a whole if something like this exists, and we’re all a part of the community.” I’m happy to provide more information, answer other questions, etc as I can.

Just a small query.. have you ever been to India? do you by any chance have Indian friends or even better, ever had a chance to interact with Indians???

Its sad that people hear from web and other media and make a opinion about the country and the service from the place, the people and critisize it so easily and openly !!!! please handle your words a little more carefully while writing things like ‘Either LinkedIn outsources their customer service to India’, please get your facts right before having writing it. And… if you think we Indians are so inefficient, then stop running into our country to find people to work for you.

Btw… just for your information, please check the IT industry or NASA or many other industries of this world… were Indians are the most visible people now!!! Take care!

Regards, Snehal Indian!