Facebook Clarifies Stance for Cutting Off Data for Apps

Published on Saturday, 26 January 2013 16:43

Ashley White

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Recently, Facebook has been quite active and strict regarding other applications sharing data from its platform. For Facebook, there is no ‘sharing’ and it has managed to restrict its data to some recently released applications, namely Vine, Wonder and Voxer. While it was being seen as a highly insecure move by the social media giant, Justin Osofsky, Facebook Director of Platform Partnerships and Operations, clarified the company’s stance, implying that they are good with applications sharing data that allows users to share data back. However, Osofsky implies, the company is not in the favour of allowing apps to use its data independently, as it violates the platform’s policy.

Facebook’s now updated policy for competitors reads:

“Reciprocity and replicating core functionality: (a) Reciprocity: Facebook platform enables developers to build personalized, social experiences via the graph API and related APIs. If you use any Facebook APIs to build personalized or social experiences, you must also enable people to easily share their experiences back with people on Facebook. (b) Replicating core functionality: You may not use Facebook platform to promote, or to export user data to, a product or service that replicates a core Facebook product or service without our permission.”

How Many Apps?

To count, Facebook mainly restricted data access to Wonder, an application by Yandex, this week. It was noted by the social media giant that the application is using its data to create a platform much like its recently introduced Graph Search, which of course kills the entire purpose for the company. And so, Wonder went off the table!

Similarly, prior to Wonder, it was Voxer that came into Facebook’s radar. The company restricted its data to Voxer, which is mainly a voice messaging app allowing users to find Facebook friends and send voice messages to them. This function in itself was a threat to Facebook’s newly introduced Messenger.

Last but not the least, Facebook also restricted data to Vine, Twitter video sharing application, that allows users to follow posts of Facebook friends.

Is Facebook Getting Insecure…

Facebook’s decision of restricting data was seen by many as an insecure move to prolong its monopoly but the company asserts otherwise. Well, whatever the case maybe, at least now Facebook has an idea of how sheer the competition is getting.