I just clicked on an innocent looking Facebook ad asking for beta testers. What followed was a page explaining how Facebook was launching a new product that involves getting users to ask and answer questions that will be published to Facebook as a whole.

Drake’s Note: I’ve copied and pasted the beta user offer from Facebook at the bottom of this post. Decide for yourself if I’m reading this right.

For those with only a moderate level of tech obsession, the service Im talking about is one in which users interact with each other, posing and answering questions, that can then be searched by all. Sort of what user forums are for software.

Google has tried it, Yahoo has tried it, and Quora, a tech-darling of the moment, is trying it. I’m a beta tester for Quora, and have used several ask-answer type services online. A missing link for many has always been scale of the user community.

We’ve all heard the, “if Facebook were a country statistics”… or, if you haven’t, heres a handy info-graphic (thats already 2 months old).

I include the graph only to say that Facebook has scale if it has anything, and even including the recent privacy hullabaloo, the 80% of users who could care less still add up to a ferociously huge user population for an ask-answer service.

Ok, ok. Yes. Google has scale. Yahoo, well, they once had scale. But both boast core services that are based on moving freely in and out of their pages. Nothing keeps users in like walled garden.

Additionally, there is something inherently social about asking questions that the early ask-answer crowd seems to have missed.

Yes, I want an expert to answer my question about how a catalytic converter works (or wikipedia), but if I want to know how to throw the best dinner party, I am just as likely to take notes on an answer from a friend of mine who throws great parties as I am from Paula Dean. Maybe more so.

Quora realizes this. They have built out a whole social networking component to their service, and encourage you to connect the other networks you are already a part of.

But what’s harder? Getting people to know one another, or getting wannabe pundits to pontificate about something they are interested in… on the internet? I know I’m an easy sell on the latter. Just ask me

Below is the copy and pasted text from Facebook’s, “so you wanna be a beta tester” questionnaire. Decide for yourself what they are up to.

Help us build the future of Facebook.

We at Facebook are preparing to launch a brand new product to the world. We think it will be as exciting as Facebook Photos and Facebook Events, but we need your help to make it great.

As a beta tester, your job will be to ask great questions and provide great answers about your favorite topics. Economics? Skydiving? Relationships? Mexican Restaurants? It’s up to you. You’ll be the first person outside of Facebook to use this product. Your expert writing will be seen by tens of millions of people — including job recruiters. And we’ll bring our best beta testers out to California to tour Facebook headquarters and meet the team.

Ready to get started?
Before we can give you exclusive beta access, we’d like you to submit three great sample questions and answers. We’re looking for evidence that you can write clearly and authoritatively on familiar subject matter.

Here are some guidelines to follow when submitting your questions and answers:

Choose provocative questions. Write about things you know. Some examples:
How can I get over my fear of flying?
What are some fun family activities to do with two small children on the weekend?
What caused the U.S. stock market to crash in 2009?
What’s the secret to throwing a great housewarming party?
What are the main differences between Google Chrome and Internet Explorer?
What are women looking for in a relationship?
What methods has BP tried to clean up the oil spill?
What should I do to prepare for the Bar exam?
How did The Beatles find success?
Write detailed, articulate answers.
Where relevant, cite and link to third-party sources such as Wikipedia.
Your answer must be original. Plagiarism is unacceptable.

Amazon has been grabbing that highlighted info off of user’s devices and aggregating it for publication on their site. The page where they display the info looks like this.

I own a Kindle and I don’t recall any opt in or out of transmitting such info. I’ve combed the Kindle agreement, which is mostly about wireless services for “Whispernet.” Amazon’s included wireless update service for Kindle. I had to poke around for quite some time before I could come across anything that could be construed as justifying the theft of privately created data.

Nine paragraphs into their “Conditions of Use” statement for Amazon.com, you find the following

REVIEWS, COMMENTS, COMMUNICATIONS, AND OTHER CONTENT

Visitors may post reviews, comments, photos, and other content; send e-cards and other communications; and submit suggestions, ideas, comments, questions, or other information, so long as the content is not illegal, obscene, threatening, defamatory, invasive of privacy, infringing of intellectual property rights, or otherwise injurious to third parties or objectionable and does not consist of or contain software viruses, political campaigning, commercial solicitation, chain letters, mass mailings, or any form of “spam.” You may not use a false e-mail address, impersonate any person or entity, or otherwise mislead as to the origin of a card or other content. Amazon reserves the right (but not the obligation) to remove or edit such content, but does not regularly review posted content.

If you do post content or submit material, and unless we indicate otherwise, you grant Amazon a nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable right to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, and display such content throughout the world in any media. You grant Amazon and sublicensees the right to use the name that you submit in connection with such content, if they choose. You represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the content that you post; that the content is accurate; that use of the content you supply does not violate this policy and will not cause injury to any person or entity; and that you will indemnify Amazon for all claims resulting from content you supply. Amazon has the right but not the obligation to monitor and edit or remove any activity or content. Amazon takes no responsibility and assumes no liability for any content posted by you or any third party.

That bold section may hold the key. If Amazon is arguing that an user’s highlighting on their Kindle device constitutes posting content or submitting material in any way, then they could make the case that those additions fall under this section of their agreement.

The language is broad, and they could easily stretch it to cover this behavior. Amazon users already silently contribute to the “users who bought this also bought” feature on the site.

Do I believe Amazon is evil? No. Dumb? Maybe. Deficient in short term memory? Youbetcha.

How much heat did they take from the regular blogosphere, not to mention the EFF crowd when they quietly crept into our rooms that night last year and removed Fahrenheit 451 from our devices?

Why risk it? Why not just ask? Why not say, to the users, “Hey, we have this incredible idea, and we’d like your help. We want to build a library of the most amazing quotes and passages from all the books in our library, and we can do it if you allow us to see what you are highlighting.”

For now though, we are left nervously staring at the little white device in the corner, wondering what juicy tidbits from last nights reading it is whispering away into Amazon’s indemnified ears.

I was never this suspicious of my books.

They’ve even timed the release for the moment when all the world’s nerds-bloggers and nerd-journalists are distracted by the bright lights of Vegas and CES 2010.

This tweet from @hreingold sums it up pretty well I think:
@WithDrake Every time Facebook hamhandedly changes privacy settings, I have to consult EFF to figure out exactly how I am being screwed

For a little background: Facebook now treats your list of friends— along with your name, profile picture, current city, gender, networks, and the pages that you are a “fan” of — as “publicly available information”. Maybe more importantly, the user can no longer throttle the privacy settings on that info. But that was last week’s problem.

I love upgrading apps. I get a little warm, fuzzy, “I’m getting something for free” feeling. However, the needle on my crap detector jumped to 11 today when I downloaded the iPhone Facebook App ver. 3.1.  These screens, which appeared after the new Facebook 3.1 install, caught my eye.

Syncing grants Facebook full access to your address book. If you already sync your Gmail contacts with your iPhone address book, that means you will also be handing over the email addresses and names of everyone you have ever emailed.

I especially like the Last sentence on the second screen. Facebook may have no liability here (god knows we’ve all clicked “yes” to enough user agreements), but they seem to be trying to release themselves from an ethical dilemma of their own creation by asking if you could go around to your umpteen hundred friends and ask if its cool if you expose all of the data you store on the min your address book, to Facebook.

They don’t tell you what they might be doing with all this new data, just that you should make sure its cool with your friends. That’s like asking your friend to lend someone they don’t know their car. But don’t worry, this guy is cool. He’ll either wash it for you or sell it.

For LOTS more on Facebook and privacy, I recommend the EFF.

Update 03.04.2010 Found out today that this post was cited as supporting evidence in a motion filed by epic.org before the FTC. Its buried in part 37, but its there. Have a look at the original documents.

EPIC Facebook Supp-1