Cheeze Blog

This story is still rumbling on, it started this morning when highly influential blogger, Robert Scoble, had his Facebook account locked. He had been violating the terms of service by running an automated script on FB to see if he could integrate the data he had on FB with that on Plaxo. As the day has ensued, Robert has actively blogged about it (readership in the influential hundreds of thousands) and the ‘2.0′ community from Twitter to Techmeme has been a buzz with comment opinion and support. Robert can explain the background here.

Why is this important to us? Well, the early adopters are already saying FB has had its day (which won’t neccasarily impact huge numbers this year but it is a significant comment) and the trust that people have offered to FB by sharing their information is being seen as not reciprocal. It is also important to understand just how quickly a story like this can break, and user opinion can start to shift. We are already seeing Facebook Groups appearing on Facebook urging the reopening of his account (admittedly only 201 members so far) and no shortage of negative commentary about Facebook.

So what we are witnessing here could be just a very public and high profile spat between Scoble, representing the early adopters and FB, rapidly being seen as ‘the establishment.’ The challenge with major and influential networkers like Scoble, is that when they pick up and endorse the ‘new’ alternative to Facebook, there will be many who follow.

We’ll post more on this once the fire has settled down. You can continue to watch it over at http://scobleizer.com or sign up to Twitter.com to see real time interaction on this subject. (Connect with www.twitter.com/jamieriddell and I’ll show you who you need to follow.) Techmeme also has a great bunch of links and commentary.

This first fight of 2008 could be significant in the future of Facebook, you heard it here first!