Yes, this is very true. See http://myownstream.com/blog#2010-05-21 ;-)
We are in the AOL days of social networking
51–60 of 66 posts
Re: We are in the AOL days of social networking
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Facebook on the other hand, embraces the open web No offense, but I find that to be an odd definition of "open web". They don't support a distributed protocol and they don't support data portability in any meaningful way.
I didn't say Facebook supports the open web. I said they embrace it (think MS embrace and extend). They don't expect you to stay on Facebook all the time, they give tools to allow Facebook to be on all sites, and they give site owners incentive to use those tools.
I think what you're neglecting is the fact that most of these tools actually further silo your information to Facebook.
Consider Facebook's comments widget for example. Yes there is clear value for the publisher, but your theory starts to fall apart on the other end of the spectrum: Facebook gets to silo all these comments and call them their own. The same principal extends to likes and worse yet, user accounts.
Facebook encouraging publishers to user their profiles, comments, likes, friends, etc. takes all of this data out of the publishers hands. Imho, this is not embracing the open web by any standards.
Re: We are in the AOL days of social networking
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't say Facebook supports the open web. I said they embrace it (think MS embrace and extend). They don't expect you to stay on Facebook all the time, they give tools to allow Facebook to be on all sites, and they give site owners incentive to use those tools.
I think what you're neglecting is the fact that most of these tools actually further silo your information to Facebook. Consider Facebook's comments widget for example. Yes there is clear value for the publisher, but your theory starts to fall apart on the other end of the spectrum: Facebook gets to silo all these comments and call them their own. The same principal extends to likes and worse yet, user accounts. Face…
In regards to your example, yes the data is warehoused in Facebook servers, but the publisher still has access to the raw data:
"Access to raw data: Query all comments via the comments.get API method or the comment FQL table."
Re: We are in the AOL days of social networking
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think what you're neglecting is the fact that most of these tools actually further silo your information to Facebook. Consider Facebook's comments widget for example. Yes there is clear value for the publisher, but your theory starts to fall apart on the other end of the spectrum: Facebook gets to silo all these comments and call them their own. The same principal extends to likes and worse yet, user accounts. Face…
In regards to your example, yes the data is warehoused in Facebook servers, but the publisher still has access to the raw data: "Access to raw data: Query all comments via the comments.get API method or the comment FQL table." http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/198
Access, however, is granted at her majesty's pleasure.
Re: We are in the AOL days of social networking
#55Open doesn't always win - check out Tim Wu's book the Master Switch. It traces the history of telephone, TV, radio, film (and the Internet, though I haven't gotten there yet). Theodore Vail and AT&T essentially created a massive closed network and David Sarnoff at RCA/NBC did the same with radio & television. They eventually lost their grip on their monopolies, but the government was involved in both. While this isn't a perfect analogy, the imperialist nature of their founders sounds familiar :)
One interesting question: If Facebook and Twitter are NBC and CBS, who will be the cable provider for social networking?
Re: We are in the AOL days of social networking
#56Open doesn't always win - check out Tim Wu's book the Master Switch. It traces the history of telephone, TV, radio, film (and the Internet, though I haven't gotten there yet). Theodore Vail and AT&T essentially created a massive closed network and David Sarnoff at RCA/NBC did the same with radio & television. They eventually lost their grip on their monopolies, but the government was involved in both. While this isn'…
From the looks of things: Comcast et al.
Re: We are in the AOL days of social networking
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Re: We are in the AOL days of social networking
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think what you're neglecting is the fact that most of these tools actually further silo your information to Facebook. Consider Facebook's comments widget for example. Yes there is clear value for the publisher, but your theory starts to fall apart on the other end of the spectrum: Facebook gets to silo all these comments and call them their own. The same principal extends to likes and worse yet, user accounts. Face…
In regards to your example, yes the data is warehoused in Facebook servers, but the publisher still has access to the raw data: "Access to raw data: Query all comments via the comments.get API method or the comment FQL table." http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/198
I didn't intend to suggest the publisher couldn't access the data. Regardless, I don't think it discredits my point.
Re: We are in the AOL days of social networking
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't say Facebook supports the open web. I said they embrace it (think MS embrace and extend). They don't expect you to stay on Facebook all the time, they give tools to allow Facebook to be on all sites, and they give site owners incentive to use those tools.
I think what you're neglecting is the fact that most of these tools actually further silo your information to Facebook. Consider Facebook's comments widget for example. Yes there is clear value for the publisher, but your theory starts to fall apart on the other end of the spectrum: Facebook gets to silo all these comments and call them their own. The same principal extends to likes and worse yet, user accounts. Face…
Obviously I made a poor choice of words in my original post, but I decided to leave it since it would be unfair to reframe the conversation after the fact.
However by responding to my post you force me to further reiterate the exact same thing once again in no uncertain terms.
At no point did I mean to imply that Facebook is in any way open. If "embrace and extend" does not make that clear then how about The Godfather Part 2 embrace [kiss] of death.
> ... but your theory starts to fall apart ...
Again, my theory is that Facebook is aware of what is going on around it, open or closed, public or private, and uses it to its advantage. And so far, nothing that is "open" or "distributed" is competing in any meaningful way with Facebook. This is very very different from what AOL did.
Re: We are in the AOL days of social networking
#60As much as I agree with the overall premise (Facebook won't be king of the mountain forever), I'm still a bit unsure about what the driving force will be for users to go from Facebook to "open" alternatives. The driving force for leaving AOL was clear: there's a big, exciting internet out there that's more interesting and innovative than AOL chatrooms and AOL keywords, and the user base was also getting a little more…
We've already seen one mass-user migration from MySpace to Facebook. What happens when a newcomer caters to the needs of a large enough portion of the Facebook crowd that you get fragmentation? Will people simply accept the social fiefdoms, or will they seek out something different? Something more open?
Were this new, open network to exist, you could re-write the statement in your second paragraph to read:
"There's a big, exciting open social network out there that's more interesting and innovative than Facebook messages and friend feeds, and the user base is also getting a little more comfortable with computers and don't need Facebook to hold it's hand so much any more."
That's not to say I don't think Facebook would react positively and hook in to any open networks, but it's going to take some serious momentum to get them to pivot.