Spotify-Facebook Partnership Angers Users
At the recent f8 conference, Mark Zuckerberg announced the integration of Spotify, the online music streaming service, with users’ Facebook account. Though the feature hasn’t rolled out to everyone yet, the Facebook-Spotify partnership already has a dislike button on their fan page.
Aside from being able to see your friends’ Spotify activities and sharing tunes you like, the partnership has a downside. If you don’t have a Spotify account yet and you wish to create one, you need a Facebook account to do so. Not a big deal, right? Especially now, almost everyone has a Facebook account, but that’s exactly the problem. Not everyone has a Facebook account. Call them crazy, call them cyberphobes or call them whatever you like, but some people still don’t like the idea of putting their lives on the Web for everyone to see, or prefer a different network for socializing. They just like to keep to themselves, but that doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy a good music streaming service.
And those with existing Spotify accounts don’t want to integrate their Spotify activities to Facebook for privacy reasons, which Spotify founder Daniel EK addressed by saying that account privacy can be tweaked ether on Facebook or on Spotify. Another Spotify employee suggests making a fake Facebook account if users do not wish Spotify to be integrated in their real Faebook account, but this suggestion is in direct violation of Facebook’s terms of service.
Ek’s Twitter account is plagued with complaints from both Spotify and Facebook users to which he responded,
Followed by,
“I just want to clarify: some users seem to believe we’re forcing existing users to be FB. We only require FB for new users.” @eldsjal
Users are telling Spotify that they made a bad decision and the move could cost them a massive loss in user base. It looks like Spotify shunned Google+ and other potential team ups in making an exclusive partnership with Facebook. It’s too soon to determine whether or not Facebook’s new, deeper app integration will be a hindrance to partner app publishers or end users, and Facebook users are some of the most vocal in the world when it comes to casting their opinion on new features. But partnerships such as the one between Spotify and Facebook are quite convenient, but should keep more options open for end users in and outside of the network. This isn’t a Zynga game, after all.
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