[JoeD]

stonetools: There's no doubt we're in the minority and it makes perfect sense for businesses to use twitter and facebook and other sites to market their products. No disagreements there. However, if they tie their services to one site, then that's where I think it'd be a bad idea.

As an example, Spotify won't let you create an account anymore you have to login with a facebook account. Whilst easy facebook integration likely increased their customer base a lot, they still managed to annoy quite a few people who wanted to sign up but now can't because they don't want anything to do with facebook.

What's silly about it, is there's not really a reason most companies can't hit both groups. Which would also mean they're not tieing themselves to a 3rd party and having to scramble for alternative options when facebook decide what they're doing should involve a payment to fb (see Apple/Amazon or Apple/NewsApps for example)

For Hachette, that would mean providing a way for non facebook users to access samples of their books. Something they could easily do by making the first few chapters available on their website as HTML or a downloadable epub. No need for protection either since it's a sample/taster and ideally you'd want people to copy/share it with everyone they can find.