Slide’s Top Friends Remains Under Investigation
Posted by Nick O'Neill on June 27th, 2008 10:00 AMYesterday, news broke out that Slide’s Funwall application was no longer working and had been banned by Facebook for terms of service violations. According to a CNet news article, “Until Facebook suspended the Top Friends app, created by Slide, anyone could browse partial profiles of anyone else on Facebook who had added Top Friends to their page. CNET News.com confirmed that the security hole exposed the birthdays, gender, and relationship status of strangers, including Facebook executives, the wife of Google co-founder Larry Page, and one profile that seemed to belong to Paris Hilton that used her middle name ‘Whitney.’”
It has now been over 24 hours and the application appears to still be down. Top Friends was the third largest application and you can assume that Slide is rapidly working on a fix. Adonomics currently values the application at a whopping $25 million. The elimination of Top Friends would make RockYou the largest Facebook application developer. Given the historically fierce battle between Slide and RockYou, you can bet that Slide is working around the clock to make sure that this security hole is fixed.
Honestly, I’m surprised that the application is still down. Facebook provided Justin Smith with the following update regarding the issue once news of the application shut down was released: “We have suspended the Top Friends application while we investigate violations of our Terms of Service. We recognize this is a popular application and don’t take this action lightly.”
It’s great to see that Facebook takes security violations seriously. I’m still concerned about the scalability of ensuring the lack of private date leaking from the platform but at least Facebook is willing to enforce their policies.
(4.64 out of 5)
(4.22 out of 5)
June 27th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Uh, I noticed the Funwall application was mentioned at the beginning of this blog post. Although there is no other mention of it being suspended throughout the rest of the post. Does this mean that just the Top-Friends application was suspended for violating Facebook security measures?
June 27th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Uh, I noticed the Funwall application was mentioned at the beginning of this blog post. Although there is no other mention of it being suspended throughout the rest of the post. Does this mean that just the Top-Friends application was suspended for violating Facebook security measures?
June 27th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Slide has been violating their TOS for a long time and Facebook always held their hand through it. Wonder what made the difference this time? Press?
June 27th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Slide has been violating their TOS for a long time and Facebook always held their hand through it. Wonder what made the difference this time? Press?
June 28th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Funwall is horrible… I hate looking at them.. I applaud Facebook’s decision.. I like the killbit tool aswell ( http://news.cnet.com/8301-10789_3-9865194-57.html )
June 28th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Funwall is horrible… I hate looking at them.. I applaud Facebook’s decision.. I like the killbit tool aswell ( http://news.cnet.com/8301-10789_3-9865194-57.html )
June 29th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
still down! @ Mon 01:27 BST - the ongoing invesigation (that go on till xmas just ask anyone who gets themselves dealing with the appeals department http://getsatisfaction.com/facebook/topics/13_r.... also the 13 reasons can be taken seriously i found it after a developer made a fuss about losing his facebook account).
anyways, i sure facebook is counting down the days to advanced wall, superwall and funwall etc gets the top friends treatment as they not want it on there platform
**these Wall applications will be driven off the platform
1. consigned to the boxes tab (likely the bottom of it)
2. go out of business (if not FB might use the Top Friend removal approach)**
“We have suspended the application while we investigate violations of our Terms of Service. We recognize this is a popular application and don’t take this action lightly.”
aka it is a competitor of ours therefore we should destroy it
just take friendfeed and the plagiarizing facebook does (Steal there ideas)
violation of ToS - a so called privacy issue created by a *power crazy platform staff (for decisions)* that *wispers ‘competition taken care off :O’*
June 29th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
still down! @ Mon 01:27 BST - the ongoing invesigation (that go on till xmas just ask anyone who gets themselves dealing with the appeals department http://getsatisfaction.com/facebook/topics/13_reasons_your_facebook_account_will_be_disabled. also the 13 reasons can be taken seriously i found it after a developer made a fuss about losing his facebook account).
anyways, i sure facebook is counting down the days to advanced wall, superwall and funwall etc gets the top friends treatment as they not want it on there platform
**these Wall applications will be driven off the platform
1. consigned to the boxes tab (likely the bottom of it)
2. go out of business (if not FB might use the Top Friend removal approach)**
“We have suspended the application while we investigate violations of our Terms of Service. We recognize this is a popular application and don’t take this action lightly.”
aka it is a competitor of ours therefore we should destroy it
just take friendfeed and the plagiarizing facebook does (Steal there ideas)
violation of ToS - a so called privacy issue created by a *power crazy platform staff (for decisions)* that *wispers ‘competition taken care off :O’*
July 3rd, 2008 at 9:10 pm
The same thing seems to have happened to SocialHi’s apps - Compare Hotness and Social Me!
July 3rd, 2008 at 10:10 pm
The same thing seems to have happened to SocialHi’s apps - Compare Hotness and Social Me!
July 5th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
[...] platform was shut down over a week ago. Many were speculating about the cause of the shut down including myself on this blog. Facebook shut down the application due to privacy violations which included random [...]