Two days ago, my Facebook page threw me a very large popup explaining that now all my interests (music, books, etc) were to become links to Pages and that I could either accept turning all my interests into links to their respective pages or go and customize. I took a second to customize because I’m not necessarily interested in being attached to the Page for all my favourite things. Once I finished this step my profile’s Info section was updated for me and now it looks like I’m only interested in 1 movie, 6 authors, and about 20 bands. This is so far from representing my actual interests. It’s also very different than what I had originally taken time to enter into my profile back when I opened my Facebook account.

So here’s what I’ve gathered so far about what Facebook is doing to me:

* My self-described interests were no longer valid and were removed – looks like you can still add things that don’t have pages, but they’d better not have the same name as an existing page or you’ll link to the wrong thing. I don’t like that I have to go and re-enter my interests.
* If there’s no existing page for something you list as an item a Community Page is created that states

“Our goal is to make this Community Page the best collection of shared knowledge on this topic. If you have a passion for {interest}, sign up and we’ll let you know when we’re ready for your help. You can also get us started by suggesting a relevant Wikipedia article or the Official Site.”

* This new Community Page automatically aggregates any mention of the item – so a book I mention in my profile is cross-posted to the news feed for that page without my knowledge or consent even if that item is not in my interests!

From cnet:

“This is a really significant step for Facebook. For years we’ve been saying that FB is an open platform, but now for the first time, the likes and interests of my Facebook profile link to places that are not Facebook.com…My identity is not just definied by things on Facebook, it’s defined by things all over the Web.”

I don’t think that this is putting your “open platform” where your mouth is. They are doing this with major partners like Amazon. Partners who bought into having “like” buttons on their sites. Facebook is streaming content from user profiles into pages for movies, books, bands, and television shows to promote those items without the user being aware, or interested in doing this kind of free advertising. Until now people signed up to be reviewers on sites like Amazon but now you’re going to be one whether you want to be or not. I don’t read “open” into this thinking. Open doesn’t mean a free-for-all of data being tossed around the web without permission. Open should allow you to customize, and to look behind the curtain to make sure you know where information is going.

Here’s my attempt at an analogy:

I buy a t-shirt for a band I like. It’s got a nice design and that’s why I chose it. I wear this shirt every day. Suddenly one day, I’m talking to a friend and I mention a band I saw the other night and my shirt design changes to that band’s logo. I’m not controlling this change, I may not even notice that it changed but from now on I’m a walking billboard for whatever music I talk about. The bands get attention, the record companies get money, what do I gain from having a shirt that changes all the time and no longer just displays the design I selected it for?

Having just read danah boyd’s SXSW talk yesterday about privacy and publicity I feel very sensitive to this new collapse of worlds that has been thrust upon me. She summarized the Facebook’s news feed update as follows:

Consider the Facebook News Feed fiasco from a few years ago. What Facebook did was aggregate content in ways that made it more visible to users who could already access it. In essence, it made quasi-public data more public. Many users flipped. Why? There’s a big difference from knowing that I just entered an “it’s complicated” relationship by looking at my profile and getting that information in a stream of updates. In effect, Facebook publicized publicly available content, making it more public. Time and time again, this is what technology companies do. Can users adjust? Yes, and they do. But their behavior changes or they find themselves in a lot of trouble in ways that they weren’t expecting.

So it looks like it’s time to adjust again. I’ve certainly learned that changing my relationship status in Facebook gets broadcast to everyone instead of just hanging out in my profile for the curious friends I have to discover. Now I must learn that if I mention a band, book, tv show, or movie I’d better really like it.

Several times in the past few weeks I’ve been up on the third floor of our Mozilla office here in Mountain View and folks have asked me questions along the lines of “How long are you in town for?” or “You’re moving here soon, right?”. Well, here’s the thing – I’ve been living in California since mid-October and working in our Mountain View office on the second floor this whole time.

When I was an intern in the summer of 2008 and we were at our previous offices I hardly saw folks from Building S because I was in Building K. Now I rarely see people from the third floor, and even the folks who sit in the other half of the second floor are strangers to me.

I could blame office layout, but the bricks aren’t going to move any time soon. So it’s up to me to do something about the lack of social interaction that my desk location provides me with.

This is the first job I’ve had with this many employees so I’m going to experiment a bit with ways to help me connect with the people I work with every day. Dria suggested going to sit up in Ten Forward (our huge gathering space) once a day. She said it would guarantee that I would run in to everyone eventually. I’ll certainly try this, though not every day. Other thoughts I’ve had for ways to interact more with my co-workers include starting a lunch time Settlers of Catan game, making an effort to go for lunch with people who are not on my team, and doing a lap around the office (both floors) with the dog to give us both a stretch and to chat with whoever isn’t too busy.

If you’re ever on the second floor, behind the conference room, in the little pocket where Release Engineering and IT are situated – say Hi!

The rules:

1. Copy/paste these rules and questions into a blog post, answer the questions, then tag some other people (however many you like) and encourage them to do the same.
2. Include a link to the original post.
3. You don’t have to be tagged to take part — if you see this post and want to play, just dive on in. Simple!

The questions (and my answers):

1. How (and when) did you originally get involved with an open source project? Which projects have you contributed to?

I originally got involved with open source projects as a student in Toronto doing a 4 year bachelor’s degree in Software Development.  I was a mature student, looking for a ‘career’ path, and soaking up everything I could about this world of creating software.  My experience prior to going to school was mostly teaching myself web design and some text games programmed in Basic when I was in high school.  In the first year of the four year degree program I learned about open vs. closed source and was instantly drawn to the politics and principles of FL/OSS.  I had been using Firefox already for a few years (cause IE 5 for Mac sucked), but didn’t make the connection with open source until a ton of Mikes (and a Johnath) came to my school to talk to us about Mozilla right before FF 2.0 came out. They were so engaging, humourous, and full of excitement for the potential of this project that thousands of people worked on, and I knew right away that the Mozilla project was the one for me to get involved with.  It combined technical superiority with an incredibly friendly user/contributor community and most importantly it’s a product that helps a lot of people be safe on the web. In my third year I took two classes with Dave Humphrey that got me working on actual code for Mozilla. My contributions led to being offered an internship with the Build team in the summer of 2008 which resulted in a part-time contract while I did my last year of school and a job offer to go to full time with Mozilla’s Build and Release team in May of 2009 when I graduated. Since getting involved in open source, I have contributed to the Miro and Drupal projects in small ways and I look forward to getting more involved as my experience and abilities improve.

2. Why did you choose to contribute to an open source project?

I was drawn to contribute because I could – even as a student with relatively little programming experience – I helped with documentation, support, anything I was able to do.  It’s great to be able to participate in something while learning at the same time and open source project models are great for this since they are largely volunteer-based.

What keeps me contributing is knowing that my contributions help people, and  because open source software is something I believe in. My leftist, anti-capitalist, activist sensibilities fit well with a not-for-profit enterprise, a free software project. Oh, and I like sharing.

3. If you were to pick one or two people who have had a major influence on your involvement with open source, who would those people be? Why?

Dave Humphrey none of this would have happened like it did without Dave. If there is a church of open source, Dave is the preacher. He pushes his students to get involved and to jump in feet first. No coddling, Dave has high expectations and expects you to get really involved with open source, not just do the minimal amount of assigned work.  In fact, his class is structured in such a way that you cannot do a mediocre job. In or out – it’s your choice. He’s amazing at matching up students with projects, and his enthusiasm for his own learning is contagious.

Ted Mielczarek is an incredible mentor and worked with me on my Mozilla student project of adding source server support to the Windows symbol server. He is very available in the student IRC channel outside of regular work hours, is willing to answer newbie questions, is a great communicator and patch reviewer who would help test my patches when that was needed, and he made me feel very welcome as a new contributor to Mozilla.

Angie Byron is a Drupal contributor I heard speak at the first Ontario Linux Conference that I attended. She spoke about being a woman in open source which interests me as a topic but more importantly she did what I hope to do – she got involved with Drupal through the Google Summer of Code program, had a great experience, and now she encourages other new folks to participate. Her testimonials are all over the GSoC wikis, and her positive reinforcement is really needed in an environment that can be intimidating or have barriers to entry for some folks.

4. How have you personally benefited from being involved with open source projects?

See question #1, I work full time for a project that I love and am excited about. I work with an extremely talented global community of people to make the web the best it can be.  I love the web and I get to work on it every day.  Also, I’m learning a lot about the process of creating and releasing software in the open and because we’re open, I can share my learning with everyone. This isn’t something I take for granted, from what I hear it’s not like that everywhere :).  

5. What advice and/or encouragement would you give to someone who is considering getting involved with an open source project?

Find a project that excites you because then you will honestly want to work on it, in any capacity.  Don’t be afraid to take on something you don’t know how to do (yet). Work on whatever it is you have taken on regularly.  I can’t stress this enough. Picking up a bug, taking months to write some intensive fix, and then resurfacing looking for feedback will not likely not ingratiate you to the community.  Blog, get on IRC, submit patches of your work in progress, ask questions – be a persistent contributor.  Even if you fail at reaching your desired solution, by failing publicly you will have shown your skills in sticking to the problem, and will have made connections with the community in the process.

Tagging

• Rob Campbell
• Chris Cooper
• Paul Osman
• Jennifer Boriss
• Alice Nodelman