Facebook: talk about dropping the ball!
Facebook. The future of internet. How high hopes we had. What silly amounts of money Microsoft spent.It was such a great idea. One community to rule them all and anyone can extend it with their own apps.But as always, a platform is nothing without it’s killer app. All Facebook got was a couple of stupid movie quiz and dating apps.I still think it’s a great idea in principle but the implementation has to be:
- Decentralized.
- Based on “webby” standards.
I’m thinking whoever puts together things like OpenID, hFN, hCard, plain old email and makes it work for my grand mother is on a winner.Facebook on the other hand, I have one word for you: Unsubscribe.
March 5th, 2008 at 3:24 am
You are not wrong. But I still have high hopes.
The concept is absolutely brilliant. The only flaws are the design, the technical implementation and business model …. oh.
The barrier to entry is far too low, which has the advantage of generating a lot of innovation. The problem is, 90% of “innovation” is about new ways to collect personal information through stupid viral applications and cutesy games. The ad-driven model propagates down to the applications themselves and everyone is just trying to spam the living sh*t out of each other. Even the concept of “Inviting” people and FORCING people to log in and add the app to their profile (all completely optional). Our own app is guilty of this (against my own recommendations).
But there are people trying to do some good and build real applications. I like to consider myself one of them. But I feel like our application goes relatively unnoticed and is buried in a cesspool of shite (to your point) that is hard for people to navigate. Worse yet is the spam these apps generate. While facebook has done a half decent job of protecting your email (if you’re careful), I find it just as annoying to receive such spam in my Facebook Inbox/notifications/requests… I’m not alone, and many people are already annoyed and have sworn off installing Facebook apps on principle.
The biggest risk that Facebook is taking by allowing such cruft to exist, is that it breeds a bad culture. Panty Raid, Drunk Fest and Food Fight are hardly becoming of the worlds leading social network… or at least I hope it is. :-/
That said, I still have hope. I’m hoping that the developers of crap apps run out of money, time or the will to survive. I’m hoping the best apps bubble to the top. And I’m hoping some of the uglier technological and design flaws are corrected (already happening, but slowly). And for what it’s worth, Facebook should charge some minimal annual fee to host apps. Say $10 / month. It would keep some of the crap out…
Perhaps I have too much faith? I guess time will tell.
Cheers,
Clinton
March 5th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Facebook: talk about dropping the ball!…
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March 5th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
What would a “decentralised social network” be that email, the web, blogging, instant messaging, VOIP, etc. isn’t already? Social network sites only work because they ring-fence their users and limit the social networking that they can do. Once it’s decentralised, you’re just back to the Internet. It’s killer app has *always* been social networking.
March 5th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Nat: Indeed, the web solves about 99% of “social networking”. There’s a couple of things missing:
* The “network” bit, i.e. friend of a friend. In LinkedIn and Facebook you can find people you know based on who else they know etc. I think this is possible to do in a more “webby” way. Google’s latest Social Graph API is a (very small) step in that direction.
* I want a perpetual address book. My friendship with someone transcends their current email address.
Clinton: Yes, I guess that’s all it comes down to. When all these stupid app builders run out of money: have people run out of their patience? have the good app builders also run out of money? Time will tell.
March 5th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Actually, there’s more. You want websites to be able to access this network in a “secure” and “privacy preserving” way. I want social features in most my websites, for example:
* A restaurant review websites shows restaurant recommendations/reviews from people that I know.
* A music website shows music/concerts from people I know or lets me connect with people that share my music taste.
* My blog reader shows blogs that people I know read.
* My email app allows me to send email to *people* not *addresses*. I don’t care about what email address my buddy has, I just want him to receive the email.
* And so on.