Enough of this conquer-the-universe bullshit.
Their end goal is to be the entire Internet in a curated show-you-only-what-you-agree-with-so-you-click-on-more-things model.
They won't stop or slow down until something else makes them irrelevant.
Their end goal is to be the entire Internet in a curated show-you-only-what-you-agree-with-so-you-click-on-more-things model.
They won't stop or slow down until something else makes them irrelevant.
It's really weird to see Facebook working the other way round - a tiny company growing huge and grabbing more and more of the wider Internet.
What next? Facebook Video? Facebook VOIP?
(Ah, yes, here – facebook movie rentals: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/09/business/la-fi-faceb... and they already offer video posting/sharing options in one's profile)
Over it's lifetime I think AOL made quite a lot of money. Just because something comes to an end doesn't mean that it "didn't work".
They apparently currently have a market cap of 2.6 billion so many years after their heyday I'm amazed they're still going.
I'm not quite sure how to word what I want to say.
The model of having a small contained network, with users doing everything on your computers, with a bit of access to the wider Internet, failed.
That's what AOL used to be. That model failed for AOL, and they converted to general ISP.
The electronic landscape in 1998 will be surprising to many people today - especially the eye watering prices.
(http://i53.tinypic.com/2janfrd.jpg)
My favourite quote from that page:
> "This is the computer industry as it used to be: people sharing ideas and solutions without the greed and grit with associated with today's corporate driven, litigation-laced, industry"
(remember this was written 23 years ago).
And so now, looking at Facebook, I see some similar features. They have their own email; their own "CB simulator"; etc.
If I had not explicitly signed-out of Facebook before visiting all these other sites, Facebook knows about it. And maybe also the browsing habits of people in my network. That gives a really deep profile about me - a lot more than just my demographics.
Recently there was an excellent article on ReadWriteWeb, about why Facebook terrifies Google: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/why_facebook_terrifies_...
Check out screen shots of their respective ad platforms in that article: the level of targeting that is possible with Facebook (which is only going to become deeper, given all the additional details they are gathering about me) is simply not possible with Google. This is one major reason why Google is pushing hard with Google+
Even if you have explicitly signed-out of Facebook, the presence of the like button on a site allows Facebook to track your movements on that site. Their like button javascript reports back a unique login cookie that is not erased when you sign off of Facebook. Pressing the like button is a small part of its purpose. Its purpose is to track you around the web as long as you have ever logged into Facebook before. This was all covered here on HN months ago, when I first learned of it.
I so hope open data combined with web-intents and a slew of standardized service-negotiation protocols comes and solves this in a final, crushing, open move.
Want event-management? Fine. That's data. Stored in your calendar. Which can be stored and managed somewhere else, just loosely connected, with OAuth to make sure nothing bad happens.
Want participant-management for those events? Fine. That's data attached to your events. Which can use your contact-data as a source. Which can be stored and managed somewhere else, just loosely connected, to one or many services, with OAuth to make sure nothing bad happens.
Want photos tied to those events? That's data. You get the idea. There should be no need to consolidate all your stuff one place. We don't do it in real life and we shouldn't have to do it on the internet either.
I dream of an internet composed of micro-services of open data talking together, composing new wonderful things.
You use the service which you think does things best for the things it does best, and you use other services for things you think they do better. You put together your own cloud of services and data.
In this world, horrible and monolithic beasts like facebook are not only not needed. They are not wanted.
We just need to standardize. We just need to chisel out the semantics of how we hook services together in a way which normal users can handle.
This is the only true path I can see forward, which stays true to the roots of the internet. This is the one path maximizing freedom, choice and reliability through network distribution.
I so cannot wait to see it realized.
To not play is to risk suicide.
Personally, my money is on Google winning out, although not my investments.