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Tim Berners-Lee says Facebook is a trap

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Re: Tim Berners-Lee says Facebook is a trap

#71

Post by meric »

nhangen wrote: post #53
mseebach wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if "do we really need this" was a viable yardstick for the value of innovation, nothing significant would have been invented in the past 100 years. And telling me that the relationships I have on Facebook are worth less that not having them at all because they are on Facebook rather than on the phone(x) is incredibly arrogant and, well, none of your business. (x) Never mind that they would have significant trou…

I never said it was. However, you're implying that other solutions missing this means that they are not valuable or effective, which is just as wrong. It's purely subjective. I'm not talking about your relationships either...I could care less. That's my point. Facebook is what it is, but just because it's popular does not mean it's necessary.

The only `necessary` things are family, shelter, clothes, food, water and transportation. Yahoo and Bing are fine replacements for google even if the latter is more popular. What is your point?

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says Facebook is a trap

#75

Post by muuh-gnu »

shykes wrote: post #6
SimonPStevens wrote: post #4

Here's what I use instead of Facebook: Google calendar for events - Anyone with any email address can be invited to an event. Google calendar also emails out standard format .ics files with it's invites so participants are free to use whatever calendar app they choose and just import the ics files. (This also hooks up nicely with my android calendar). I'm looking forward to when everyone on Facebook gets an @facebook…

You're not missing out on the quality of the tools. You're missing out on connectivity. Some people can't be accessed without Facebook. The quantity of those people is growing.

> Some people can't be accessed without Facebook.

That means that the people who cant be accessed without facebook had to voluntarily cut themselves off from email-only people first. And while doing that, they had no concerns that they will be missing connectivity, because from their POV the email-only people obviously had such a low social rank anyway, that they simply could afford to sorta blackmail them ("either you get a facebook account or I'll simply cut you off.") without any fear they could be losing anything of (social) worth.

Getting a facebook (or MySpace/ICQ/MSN/AIM/YIM/whatever 1-vendor-only proprietary network) account just because someone forces you to do it is a way to confess to yourself that you must have be pretty low in the pecking order in your desired social circle and that involuntarily creating accounts with service-de-jour wont be the last thing you'll be forced to do to avoid being cut off. Or, alternatively, just get real friends.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says Facebook is a trap

#77

Post by vl »

SimonPStevens wrote: post #4

Here's what I use instead of Facebook: Google calendar for events - Anyone with any email address can be invited to an event. Google calendar also emails out standard format .ics files with it's invites so participants are free to use whatever calendar app they choose and just import the ics files. (This also hooks up nicely with my android calendar). I'm looking forward to when everyone on Facebook gets an @facebook…

Google calendar for events - there is a lock-in and user training problem though. Some people I invited to a party couple years ago couldn't figure out how to accept my Google calendar invite (by clicking link in the email), same people not only manage to accept FB invites, but even capable of creating event of their own. I use FB for invites since this accident.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says Facebook is a trap

#78

Post by MortenK »

meric wrote: post #71
nhangen wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said it was. However, you're implying that other solutions missing this means that they are not valuable or effective, which is just as wrong. It's purely subjective. I'm not talking about your relationships either...I could care less. That's my point. Facebook is what it is, but just because it's popular does not mean it's necessary.

The only `necessary` things are family, shelter, clothes, food, water and transportation. Yahoo and Bing are fine replacements for google even if the latter is more popular. What is your point?

His point is in line 1: "However, you're implying that other solutions missing this means that they are not valuable or effective, which is just as wrong. It's purely subjective."

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says Facebook is a trap

#79

Post by blasdel »

keyist wrote: post #63
keyist wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think that Berners-Lee and W3C get way too much credit for the web. And this is an incredibly arrogant statement by Mr. Berners-Lee. I also think that green is a totally awesome color, and that we can breed birds with horses to produce pegasii. For more attacks on the W3C at best tangential to Mr. Berners-Lee's actual essay, read on. > Facebook has in-fact done some serious web innovation the last years and W3C h…

Switching back to my regular voice, because there are points to make that I can't shoehorn into the fisking format. "Berners-Lee and W3C get way too much credit for the web". Putting 'Web Founder' in airquotes. This blatant disrespect is what angered me the most and influenced my decision to fisk instead of a polite rebuttal. Tim Berners-Lee: - was the first to execute on the idea of combining hypertext with TCP/IP a…

Of course, he did a lot of amazingly awesome stuff as a hacker in the early 90s — but he started turning out turd after turd as soon as his W3C took control over web standards from the IETF and he became a bureaucrat.

He produced a masterwork, but I can't think of a second one — from my POV all the awesome post-IETF web developments happened despite the W3C's best efforts to derail them.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says Facebook is a trap

#80

Post by paulnelligan »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #41
paulnelligan wrote: post #32

I always have a feeling that facebook is limiting entrepreneurs. You can't launch a social product today without making it facebook compliant and this means abiding by facebook's rules, and working within their structural limitations. These limitations they've imposed ensure that they keep their market share and prevent anyone else from really growing in the same space as them. But I don't think they can stay at the…

I know a guy who recently tried to build a social application, starting outside of Facebook. It was actually a very good idea and well implemented; unfortunately, the complete lack of connectivity to groups of people sealed its fate. By the time he got to integrating into Facebook Connect, he was almost out of money. I think entrepreneurs wanting to build a social product are in better shape today because of Facebook…

I agree ... but openness and transparency alone may be a good enough draw for many people, so long as diaspora can compete with facebook feature-wise.
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