Put Your Taproot Into the Independent Web

(image) This article – Early Facebook App Causes Is Being Reborn As A Polished Web Site For Good – caught my eye as I was nodding off last night (thanks so much for moving the web into my bedroom, Flipboard. No really.)

Now, it didn’t catch my eye because of its subject – Causes – but because of what its subject was doing: refocusing its business back out on the Independent Web, from its original home in the zoological garden that is the Facebook platform.

This is indicative of what I believe will become a trend over the next year or so, barring moves by Facebook to stem the tide (I’ve heard tell of far more “weblike” canvas pages coming, for instance). Companies that have planted their presence too deeply into the soils of Facebook are going to realize they need to control their own destiny, and move their focus and their core presence back into the independent waters of the open Internet (think Zynga “project Z”, for instance). Listen to Causes VP Chris Chan on the decision to move back to Causes.org:

As the years have progressed the web has gotten a lot more social, and it makes more sense to have our own brand and site. We can still be ‘on’ Facebook in the sense that we plug into News Feed and fan pages, but having our own brand gives us full, top to bottom control over the product experience, something that we think is critical for building the best tool possible for organizers to create campaigns for social change.

That “full, top to bottom control” means a lot more than just the chrome finishes on your website. It means controlling all the data created by interactions on that site, including if and how you share that data with your consumers and your partners (including Facebook, of course).

In seminars, writings, conferences, and speaking gigs around the world over the past couple of years, I’ve started using a phrase when asked my opinion of what a brand’s social strategy might be, in particular when it comes to Facebook. The context is nuanced (I’m a fan of integrating Facebook into your brand efforts), but the point is simple: If you are a brand, publisher, or independent voice, don’t put your taproot into the soils of Facebook. Plant it in the independent web. (A bit more on this can be found here).

Now, that doesn’t mean “don’t use Facebook,” not at all. I think Facebook is an extraordinarily important part of the Internet ecosystem, and having a robust presence there is a critical part of any brand (or company’s) strategy.

But Facebook is a for profit, advertising and data-driven company. If you seat mission critical portions of your business inside its walls, you are driving value to Facebook – and you are presuming the trade, in terms of traffic and virality, will come out on balance favoring you. I wouldn’t count on that. Facebook will always have more data than you do about how consumers use the Facebook platform, and will always be able to leverage that data more effectively.

Not to mention, have you checked out Facebook’s terms of service when it comes to using data derived from its platform? Here are a few choice terms that come from a quick perusal (sources are here and here):

– You own your own content, but you grant Facebook license to use it as well.

– You may only request user data needed to operate your app (if you create a Facebook app as part of your presence on Facebook).

– You may not use data collected in your app in your other advertising efforts (including ad networks).

– You may not integrate analytics from third party sources into your efforts inside Facebook. Facebook, however, can gather data from how your app or page is used for their own advertising programs.

– Facebook reserves the right to do exactly what you’re doing at any time – if you create a killer new app inside Facebook, and it takes off, Facebook can decide to do the same thing. (Clearly Facebook isn’t motivated to do this if it angers a major advertising partner, but this term does give pause).

– Facebook reserves the right to market your work in Facebook’s own promotional efforts.But if you want to promote what you are doing on Facebook across third party advertising networks out on the Independent Web, you must get written permission.*

(I’ll be writing more about terms of service in general in another post). 

Now, I don’t think Facebook’s terms are particularly crazy, they’re written by lawyers looking to protect and  preserve as much value as possible for Facebook as a corporation. They have the right to do so, and they are quite open and transparent about their policies.

But it drives me crazy to see major brands using expensive television time to drive consumers to a Facebook program that lives exclusively inside Facebook. (I imagine the reverse is true when Facebook executives see those same ads). I’m sure it works in the short term – you get folks there, they “like” or “follow” your brand, and they engage in whatever promotion or campaign is currently running. But if that campaign, promotion, or program lives only on Facebook, well, good luck deriving all the value you possibly can from it.

If that same program lives out on the Independent web – your own site, on your own domain, with your own platform – then you own all the data and insights, and you can broker those assets back into a Facebook page, or anywhere else you may care to. It doesn’t work the other way around. Imagine trying to replicate the value you create in a Facebook-exclusive program into, say, Google+ or Twitter, or in a major buy across an agency trading desk. Not with the terms outlined above.

It’s not like Facebook is stopping brands from leveraging the service out on the open web – that’s the point of the Open Graph, after all (and it’s what Causes is using now). Facebook knows that independence is critical to the future of the Internet, and has created tools to insure it’s a major player there. My advice: use those tools inside your own presence on the web. But put your taproot into soil that you control, soil that is shared by the millions of other independent voices on the web. That insures you’ll be part of a free and open ecosystem where serendipity and opportunity can create wonderful new possibilities.

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*Thanks to my researcher, LeeAnn Prescott, for analysis of these terms. If I’ve gotten any of this wrong, I hope folks from Facebook and/or my smarter-than-I-am readership will correct me, and I’ll update this post accordingly. 

Also, an important caveat – I am founder and Chair of a company that promotes the Independent Web, and operates a significant network for the purposes of advertising.