Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

I've seen some entertaining thoughts in the past few hours related to the issue of Robert Scoble attempting unsuccessfully to take "his" data out of Facebook.

Paul Buchheit wonders if Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail should ban Facebook: So the question is, should Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail block Facebook (or close the accounts of anyone who uses Facebook's "friend finder") for violating their Terms of Use?

I can see Paul's point about the letter of the law, but I personally entered that information into those services, and they provide an export mechanism for my contact information, so I should be able to use it. I already use an automated service with Gmail that they clearly allow - Thunderbird gets my Gmail via POP3.

At any rate, the contact information was already mine, and I probably could just retype it in to the next service, but Google probably just imported it themselves from somewhere else anyway.

However, the situation with Facebook is quite different. Neither Robert Scoble or you or I ever entered our contact data into Facebook. We allowed Facebook to compare our list of email addresses to their list of email addresses and highlight the matches. They already had the data; we didn't give them anything new. Since we didn't enter any data, then how can it be said that we own any data?

After that we may have just friended people or had them friend us, which again does not grant us any right to the data outside of Facebook. You do own your list of friends though, which Facebook does allow you to extract - though without personal information such as email addresses, but then we already had that information in the first place.

The social graph that Robert was trying to extract doesn't belong to him. It is merely a benefit that he gets from using the Facebook service.One that clearly benefits many users of Facebook or they wouldn't be using the service.

That's the current state of affairs, but it doesn't mean that I agree with it. Scott Karp thinks that the next war on the web will be fought over the ownership of data. Dave Winer thinks that Facebook is at a tipping point here:

So Facebook has the opportunity to be a crossover company, part of the next generation -- or a last gasp of the generation that's about to run out of gas. It's their choice.

I agree. You should own your data, and you should be able to control what you share and what you don't in a granular fashion.

Though I doubt that this is really such a big deal for the average user. They are happy in the Facebook world and aren't really thinking about what happens when they leave. As Mark Evans notes, Facebook has just become mainstream:

So what’s going on, and does is suggest anything other than the people who embraced Facebook early have just grown tired of it, and moved on to the next exciting thing - be it Twitter, Seesmic, etc.?

It probably means nothing. It’s likely just a sign that Facebook has moved into the mainstream while those ahead of the pack are already ready to move on.

But expecting a company like Facebook, whose valuation is solely based on the data they have and control, to change just because you've now decided that the Terms of Use you agreed to no longer suit you is a bit like closing the barn door after the horse is already loose.

If that were the case then Google could just create a totally open Facebook clone with complete data portability based on ad revenue alone and everyone would flock to it. Though it may be too late for that now.

I have a Facebook account, but I don't keep personal information there and I don't depend on it to maintain my contact information. If you have concerns about your data, then you shouldn't either.