When Work And Social Worlds Collide: Microsoft Outlook, Xobni & Facebook

Xobni is perhaps one of the most interesting e-mail add-on applications that I've come across over the years. The company offers a free Microsoft Office Outlook plug-in that you can download. Once installed, it indexes your inbox and offers a variety of functions:

• search
• contact profile
• relationship statistics
• related people
• threaded conversations
• shared attachments
• correlate the Outlook contact data with external sources (e.g., LinkedIn, Facebook, Skype)

Connecting Social Structures

What's interesting with the recent update is the merging of business and social context with sometimes unintended results. Given the growth of free web-based mail options (Yahoo!, Google, etc), most people are probably provided Outlook by their employer. I imagine (although I do not have statistics) that the majority of Outlook use case scenarios are within the workplace nowadays. If so, then most of that e-mail interaction is conducted within a business environment. The blending of work and personal mail is nothing new but the integration of information aggregated from social networking sites and merged into a business productivity tool is somewhat recent.

Xonbi makes the argument that it is merely automating what people can do manually today (which is a credible argument). Oftentimes when I receive an email from someone, I might look them up in LinkedIn or do a Google search to find their blog, etc. The concept of automating those tasks to create a composite view alongside Outlook has merit.

There are issues however:

• Does the person whose social data is being pulled from external to the social network site have proper notification of such activity by an application?
• Does that person have control over that application in terms of editing its settings?
• Should someone have to explicitly provide consent when information is used outside the site?
• Even if the information is searchable (or has some level of public viewing rights defined), does the change in context (re: being integrated into an application), alter how such data should be used?
• What responsibility does the source site and application providers have to make sure people are properly informed?
• What broader issues arise from mass, automated harvesting of profile data at a programmatic level?
• What relationship controls are needed when social data is shared outside the context of the original relationship agreement (e.g., you are my friend on Facebook but I don't want that friendship shown without Outlook)?

Xobni & Facebook Connect

When I installed the new version of Xobni, I began to see the profile pictures from many of my co-workers, friends and business contacts. In some cases, I wondered if people realized that their more social Facebook photo was being displayed alongside an e-mail message. It's an interesting collision of sorts as the e-mail message "tone" in certain instances is somewhat formal (e.g., upcoming company briefing, press release, briefing request) and yet the picture alongside it at times was anything but work-related.

Xobni leverages Facebook Connect to access the information it displays. It also provides an option for people to "log into" Facebook to see more of the person's profile. When you do that for the first time, you are brought to a Facebook screen which requests that you add the Xobni application.

If you choose to do this, you need to consider the implications since Xobni now has access to additional information that is not available via an Internet search (e.g., profile information, photos, status messages, friends info, etc).

When I tested this feature out, I was really surprised by the extent of the information now accessible. For people I already had "friended" on Facebook I had access to the same information that I had access to if I was within the Facebook site. This was what I expected although I still have reservations that Facebook and Facebook Connect application developers are addressing some of the questions I pose above. I do believe that context of a relationship agreement made within one environment does not necessarily transfer to other environments without the parties being aware and in some cases, consenting to that information being revealed in those other contexts.

What really surprised me though was that I now had access to people's information via Xonbi's Facebook Connect application that I could not access normally on Facebook.

For instance, I took one of my AR contacts from a vendor I cover but one with whom I do not have a Facebook relationship with as an example:

1. Google the AR person: Found
2. Search on Facebook: Found, able to view the mini-view of the profile (basically the photo, name, network stuff)
3. View in Xobni: Able to view what I can see on Google and via Facebook
4. Log into Xobni and add the Xobni Facebook application
5. View in Xobni: Now able to see additional information as well as photo albums - even though we are not "friends" on Facebook. Access to the entire profile was disallowed so the scope of what Xobni and Facebook Connect does appear limited at some point.

Findings

This could be a bug in Xobni's implementation of Facebook Connect. Or, it could be a bug in Facebook Connect overall. Or, it's an actual capability which would seem to violate most people's expectations of privacy and controls over their social data.

Viewing the Applications Settings page for Authorized Applications does reveal the Xobni application but it's not clear how to limit the data Facebook Connect makes available to the application or to "tune" the Xobni application itself. You can go to the Settings / Privacy Settings / Applications page in Facebook and adjust what information is shared via Facebook Connect Applications but it is a global setting which might not always be what people prefer in all cases. 

When I uninstalled the Xobni Facebook application my access rights returned to what I consider "normal" (if I'm not a FB friend I should not be able to see your photo albums, etc).

Recommendations

"Let's be careful out there" seems to come to mind (especially for those that remember the TV series Hill Street Blues):

• Understand the relationship controls made available to you by the social network sites you belong to
• Understand how applications access your social data, how applications alert you to their use of your social data, and how the site allows you to adjust application settings
• Edit your relationship controls and application settings appropriately
• Understand the pro and con issues related to portability and reuse of social data

Comments

[Robert]

You should also check out Gist(www.gist.com). It works with Outlook as well as Gmail and any other web-based information source (LinkedIn, etc.) combining your contacts with news about them.

Robert
Gist, Inc.

[cjw]

Thanks for the Xobni info. http://www.outlooktrackit.com is actually the reason I am sticking with Outlook. Outlook Track-It basically is a toolbar plugin that flags emails for followup reminders.

[Mark]

CJW, I have Outlook Track-It on my Outlook program. It's the best plugin there is for GTD. Excellent reply reminder, and I'm happy that it's just a small toolbar. Any others?