What if Zuck invented the web?

If Zuck had invented the web...

It would look a lot like AOL. Huge, proprietary, popular with the public, overvaluated in the market, and fatally committed to platform over protocol.

Remember when AOL bought Time-Warner? This has all happened before. Unless Facebook takes a radically different turn, the first competitor to solve the graph problem is going to eat their lunch.

People seem to be responding to the title rather than the content of this article. Funny enough, but the linked post is actually not about that thought experiment. It's Winer's response to someone else writing about the "What if?".

Winer more or less defends Zucker via the Joe Hewitt argument that the web is stagnating, that the web is not a sufficiently rich platform for apps and that the only (best?) way to move forward is to innovate on one's own without (any? too much?) consideration for standards.

I don't even understand this argument, to be frank. Winer says "We were making richer software than the stuff you can run in the web browser 20 years ago." But he gives no examples. I don't know what he has in mind, but really? Richer than 280slides? Richer than Gmail? Richer than Etherpad? Really?

As for the stagnating web, I don't buy that either. Even if it isn't all rainbows and ponies, there's a lot going on with web-based software in the last few years - arguably far more than on the desktop.

Edit: here's the original thought experiment post

http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2010/05/15/if-mark-zuckerber...

Dear god. I just realized that Mark Zuckerberg is the new Bill Gates. I give it another week before trolls all over the web start writing referring to Facebook as Fa$ebook.

He did, in his dreams. However, reality slapped him in the face and he hopefully woke up.

Now i'm not so much interested in what he/facebook has done, but what they will be doing - I think this matters most. My thoughts are that they will still be heading in the same direction with the same plan, but just less transparent about it.

Luckily, he didn't. No need to give each other nightmares, is there?