Facebook changes attitude to data after rest of world says no

Facebook's new terms of service slunk back to the C20th this morning after Mark Zuckerberg's apology earlier in the day didn't clear the media storm around the service. It has been replaced by the old (and still highly suspicious) one as a holding position. However, this is a temporary measure until it can be replaced by this:

UPDATE FROM FACEBOOK (IN RESPONSE TO YOUR COMMENTS):
YOU OWN YOUR INFORMATION.
WE DON'T CLAIM RIGHTS TO YOUR PHOTOS OR OTHER CONTENT.
WE WON'T USE ANY INFORMATION YOU SHARE ON FACEBOOK FOR ANYTHING YOU HAVEN'T ASKED US TO.
WE WILL NOT SHARE YOUR INFORMATION IF YOU DEACTIVATE YOUR ACCOUNT.
WE APOLOGIZE FOR ANY CONFUSION AROUND THESE ISSUES.

In other news, the case against Pirate Bay pretty much collapsed on day two after the prosecution admitted they didn't understand how BitTorrent works.

Maybe we can change stuff after all. Let's start in New Zealand

The information democracy hits old media

The New York Times has released three APIs in the last month. No, I didn't hear about it either. Doesn't even register when you search on Guardian Media, but it is a far bigger step to freeing information from the traditional publishers' archives than the Guardian's move to publish full text RSS last month.

Campaign Finance API app


Why is this? Because of what an API (Application Programming Interface) allows thrird party developers to do. As an example, the most famous APIs are those of Facebook and Google Maps. They are the code that allows content to be remixed, mashed up, passed on, and generally made useful for people.

And why so important for developers? To use an example from Adam Broitman's article for MIN Online:

Say you are a movie buff who decided to create an amateur movie review site. Along with every one of your reviews you want to include one of The New York Time’s 22,000 movie reviews (dating back to 1924). In theory (as there are rules that govern the use of the API) you can build an application that automatically pulls the movie review, and all information that The New York Times has on the movie you are reviewing, into a format that you designed for presentation on your site.

And why so important for traditional publishers? Well, we don't really know yet, as there's no subscription cost, and obvious source of ad revenue. What is really important is that this information used to be hidden away in a destination site, and is now free to move around wherever developers' imaginations take it. Say the example above takes off, then the NYT's reputation will grow as the reference point for online movie reviews. We don't know how the future revenue model of the internet will work, but you can be fairly sure that money will follow reputation.

Do we think the UK tech/media press missed this as they didn't think it was significant?