Here's a little more value http://goo.gl/q8od about the open web. I'd been wanting to knock out a blog post myself, however if i bash FB they might just NULLIFY me. LOL Kidding..

I invite you to learn more about the Open Graph protocol: http://opengraphprotocol.org/

Thanks for taking the time again to respond and clarify. If what you're saying is correct, I would be wrong, and I couldn't be happier. If the Open Graph protocol works with any identity provider, it would be great indeed.

Thank you for pointing this out to me.

We are really discussing two things here:
1) the Open Graph Protocol, an open technology which any content website can implement and which any identity provider or crawler can consume.
2) the Facebook Like button, a product which consumes Open Graph data and publishes connections back to Facebook.

You’re correct that Facebook Like acts as the carrot to persuade site publishers to join the Open Graph. What’s wrong with a compelling carrot? Once this graph exists, it is a graph that all participants of the open web can benefit from. As you said, structured data is good for everyone, and I think it’s awesome that we finally have a product that is encouraging people and companies to structure their data in an open way.

Facebook Like is just the first consumer of the Open Graph; it is just one product illustrating the possibilities of pervasive semantic data. I hope (and expect) that Google’s Buzz button, Twitter’s Retweet button, the OpenLike effort, and others will all build similar tools that parse and consume the same Open Graph. I’m also looking forward to see what new and interesting ideas sprout up to take advantage of all this semantic data.

Twitter adopts the public-by-default privacy model, so there's nothing notorious about it. Facebook, on the other hand, amassed users with the promise of privacy, and is now turning public, without adequately warning users of its changes and making opt-out difficult because of lock-in.

Regarding the open-web, see Chris's post: http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2010/04/22/understan…. Using the word 'open' in technologies has become fashionable, but when it is used deceptively repeatedly, it becomes notorious.

Check out the list of open source technologies Facebook has contributed to: http://developers.facebook.com/opensource/
Additionally, Facebook co-authored the OAuth 2.0 spec, invented the Open Graph protocol, hosted an OpenID summit, and massively increased awareness of single-sign-on.

With regards to privacy, Twitter apps generally have access to your username and password, meaning they have access to everything you do on Twitter (if not more — since most users recycle passwords). Meanwhile, with the new permissions model launched at f8, Facebook apps only get access to the parts of your profile that you specifically grant access to.
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authenticat…

If you have more questions, feel free to contact me.