Comments on: Pondering Facebook, Twitter, Google, Open Standards And The Future Of The Web

By: gregory

gregory — Sun, 25 May 2008 04:58:23 +0000

if you want to see the movie, go in the theater (walled garden) … if you want to know about movies, go online … something for everybody

but facebook is clunky and approximate compared to living in a community, and something more refined will replace it

we are in a river

By: KP

KP — Fri, 23 May 2008 12:49:47 +0000

@Scott

You’re right, it is about interoperability. And it’s like this: there are personal digital identities (people) and there is the Internet (world). And there are tons of concepts for information and communication to get them together somehow.

The names of the most popular concepts right now are the ones you mentioned in the title of your post. But as Neil points out, nothing is forever. Facebook is getting slow and clumsy, people are starting to leave (or just stop using) it. No matter what Facebook does, it will lose relevance in the next couple of years or decades a least.

First, it’s a matter of infrastructure, a Facebook closed shop for billions of current users is not going to work. Second, it’s a matter of emotion. There will always be a smaller but powerful group of people that goes a different road, and Facebook cannot afford to keep them out of their system.

It’s like Microsoft’s office software for the Macintosh. Google’s philisophy is far more promising — even though/that’s because some of their influence needs to be cut back. But hey, they are going to melt down as well:

http://loser.com

Neil is right, new players will come up, and I’m sure that these players fully support the concept of openess and interoperability #semantic web …

By: Neil

Neil — Fri, 23 May 2008 03:59:30 +0000

The compuserve analogy gives a hint: something new and more suited to the situation will be spawned, taking\combining the best features of current players like Facebook and Google, etc, etc.

Sounds positively darwinian, doesn’t it. But that’s the internet for you.

You can see this process in action every day. For example, take Seesmic = Twitter meets YouTube.

By: Scott Karp

Scott Karp — Fri, 23 May 2008 00:43:18 +0000

@KP

The problem I think is interoperability. What happens when Fred Wilson’s children grow up and get jobs, with corporate email addresses, and have to deal with people, companies, and organizations who don’t live inside Facebook. The more they have to communicate outside of Facebook, the less it has an “all inclusive” value proposition.

@Neil

Sometimes I find it more useful to ask a question than to answer one.

By: Times Emit: Apt’s links for May 21st through May 22nd

Times Emit: Apt’s links for May 21st through May 22nd — Fri, 23 May 2008 00:31:29 +0000

[...] Pondering Facebook, Twitter, Google, Open Standards And The Future Of The Web – Publishing 2.0 – “No company can touch Googleâ??s ability to monetize the use of the open web â?? the more people use the web, the more money Google makes. Can Facebook compete with Google by eschewing the open web and open standards? Or is Facebook betting against the in [...]

By: KP

KP — Thu, 22 May 2008 21:09:47 +0000

Didn’t we have almost the same discussion already 13 years ago? In those days most people had to be a member of compuserve or similar networks to get connected with the online world. Apart from students only very few people used ISPs to dive into the open Web space.

Ok, compuserve isn’t around anymore, but the genral concept still exists, and obviously enough, the Web is still there too. I remember back then I compared the situation with the travel industry. A lot of people (especially families) like to stay in holiday clubs with “all inclusive” services. They enjoy their time completely isolated. And then there are real travellers, those who like to explore, to learn, to travel around. Both concepts coexist today, just like the world (regard it as the infrastructure for any kind of travel) still exists as well.

By: Neil

Neil — Thu, 22 May 2008 21:03:47 +0000

When I finished reading this I thought: What is your point? What are you trying to say? Open is open. Closed is closed. Half open is half open.

I think you have to do better than this. If you post these “proofs” I think it is incumbent on you to at least attempt to theorise what they might mean. The worst you can do is look silly in hindsight.

For example, you could say…

* These proofs suggest that Facebook could eventually fail because…

* These proofs suggest that the ideal social networking site would have these features…

Here’s a thought: how about a Google social networking function. Call it Googlebook or whatever.

By: Heikki Pelkkikangas

Heikki Pelkkikangas — Thu, 22 May 2008 14:18:10 +0000

As G Love points out, I also see Facebook, Twitter and the likes primarily as 1st generation tools for indirect one-to-many communication. Before we only had one-on-one tools such as email, but mailing lists are far from what Facebook can offer.

I don’t think the social graph data stored by Facebook is really that important. It is, after all, just kind of an address book we also have in Outlook. Should someone succeed on creating a better way for one-to-many communication, Facebook might rapidly loose its user base.

By: Ken Arnold

Ken Arnold — Thu, 22 May 2008 14:04:58 +0000

The question that occurs to me: will the young people using Facebook be inclined by habit to remain in their closed but comfortable system? It works for them. As they grow up, it will grow with them, in unknown ways. What people learn to do as young adults tends to condition how they behave. The net and Google are products of a particular generation, modes of communication the next generation may not find as appealing (for reasons we of this generation may not fathom).

By: Rob

Rob — Thu, 22 May 2008 13:11:54 +0000

I don’t think Facebook, and others like it, have to open their doors. I’m all for opening everything up to users, but the majority of people who are on Facebook, and are considered users, mainly, middle/high school students and still a substantital number of college students, are living their online life in Facebook. They don’t need the doors to open because everything they need is right there. Why log into an email account or search google when you can check your Facebook messages and do a search within Facebook…or just browse your friends’ profiles/apps until you find what you are looking for?
The people that want social networking sites opened up, and the people that really use these sites are two totally different sets of users.

By: I don’t want your stinking SuperPoke; My dangerous relationship with Facebook «

Thu, 22 May 2008 13:03:10 +0000

[...] for my vote, when does my Facebook habit, become a dependency? I don’t think Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 knows either, but he makes some earie observations. Search [...]

By: Alexander van Elsas

Alexander van Elsas — Thu, 22 May 2008 07:17:01 +0000

Facebook does hold a big enough part of the Internet to become profitable and obviously will try to monetize on the data they have on the user and his/her friends (the social graph). That might prove to be a profitable move but there are also many possible problems with such a strategy. Problems such as privacy, the given that they are a walled garden and destiny based, while the whole web will become social. It’s hard to compete with the Google that runs the largest walled garden around (the entire web )

By: G Love

G Love — Thu, 22 May 2008 04:14:25 +0000

It seems to me that Fred Wilson brings the key to this puzzle…as someone who has “lived within” Outlook for the past 2 years, I can see how that experience could have a parallel within Facebook…as an extension of self.

I don’t see it as betting against the web, but rather taking an element that has heretofore lived off the web (by necessity), and allowing it a safe haven online. For many, extending so much of ourselves into a purely public space is a non-starter.

Basically, I don’t see this as betting against the web, but instead a small expansion of what we would consider placing on the web.

However, with that said, I think much of Facebook’s ecosystem will eventually open up to the larger web, with public and private spaces.