Tim O’Reilly is calling for Facebook to share social graph data so that systems can leverage all the data you’ve shoved into Facebook and use it within their own apps.

There are a couple of issues here.

Firstly, Facebook isn’t actually stopping 3rd-party API developers from knowing who your friends are, and if your friends agree to add an application, the app provider can see their graph too. What isn’t agreed yet is whether this should be made more open, or whether there needs to be a standard way of describing this data. There are all sorts of reasons why I might not want my “social graph” to be made available in an easily-manageable format, not least because it raises privacy concerns.

There is also the fact that Facebook’s business model relies on not making this data available. The “expose your data, and they will come” argument relies on a simple metric of conversion.

Within a company like Amazon, exposing the product catalogue by API is a no-brainer. The more places their stock list is available, the more chances they have of getting somebody into the system, the more likely they are to convert them into a sale. The porous membrane an API gives an app developer in this instance means 3rd-prty developers do the hard work of getting stock shifted in countless innovative ways the original company wouldn’t have thought of.

Facebook however, is different. The ‘conversion’ in their instance is getting somebody to look at pages with adverts on it. What they need is for their users to actively recruit more users - invite them inside the walled garden - and then try and keep them there. They’ve out-sourced the “retaining” part of the equation to developers (playing games, taking quizzes, sharing links, glorified e-mail), but by allowing their most valuable asset to be easily exported they are reducing their customer’s incentive to stay within the walled garden.

As always, it comes down to whether you have a right to that data, and whether you have a right to move it. I’d argue you do, but I’m suggesting it’s going to be hard for Facebook to allow you to take it wherever you want.

[UPDATE]: I realised there is a way to do this without Facebook’s permission. I’ve written it up on the site.