some thoughts on Facebook Connect and VRM

Granted, its (VRM) not a new idea...but 2 key things have changed to make it feasible: consumer culture and online behavior have shifted and 2) the technology is (getting) there...its exciting especially with all of the open standards work that that Brad Fitzpatick and crew are working on (and of course the VRM project of Doc Searls that focuses on creating VRM based on an open framework).

What it is interesting with FB is what they're up to with Facebook Connect...on the surface it seems fine and dandy and great...great for users and great for participating 3rd party sites. But i can't help but feel like FB has some sinister long term plan to be a VRM system of sorts...not adopting open standards and the ethos of VRM, but rather attempting to be a closed data storage hub that feeds sites and services within the FB universe via FB Connect...you could have a seemingly "data ubiquitous" experience (and thereby create a POTENTIALLY VRM-like system using FB data and the entire Connect network of sites and services whereby there could be a value exchange between consumers and suppliers) under an AOL-like FB Connect world, but in reality it would just be a massive, closed system which maintains its proprieter status of user data, rather than that data being owned by the users themselves (hence a bastardized version of VRM).