The Future of Facebook
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CEO Mark Zuckerberg talks about the web giant's plans for expansion and clears up those IPO rumors
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Facebook.com, the No. 2 U.S.   social network site that is quickly expanding beyond its   college student base, has been met with a sudden privacy   backlash by users after it made design changes this week.
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Following Facebook's lead, the social networking site plans within the next few months to make an API for its platform available for anyone looking to build applications to run atop the site.
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Today's announcement from Facebook is the reason why Google announced OpenSocial last week. They must have gotten a leak from one of the companies that stood with Facebook, so they knew what was coming. They weren't scared of Facebook's technology, because they didn't respond with technology. They were scared because Facebook has a better advertising story than Google does. They are getting ready to offer some very premium web real estate that (pay attention now) Google can't compete with. And advertising is Google's bread and butter, advertising is to Google as operating systems are to Microsoft. They can't let somebody appear to be better than they are in advertising. Yet that's what Facebook is, better than Google in advertising. Here's what Facebook can do.  Let's say I bought a Wii and I like it. They can tell all my friends "Dave bought a Wii and he likes it." That's a lot more likely to result in a sale  than an intrusive ad like this one, that was displayed next to an email I sent to some friends about their New Networked Living Room. Google thinks I might want to buy Moroccan Lamps, or something called a Unique Shabby Chic (huh?) or Crate & Barrell bedroom furniture. Of course I tune that shit out, I don't even see it. It has zero impact.   Anyway, I was talking with Doc Searls a few minutes ago and he mentioned OpenSocial and I told him it was just a lot of noise meant to distract people from what Facebook was doing in advertising. He hadn't heard anything about it even though he was at a tech conference in Denver today and yesterday. I said there you go, Google's strategy worked. But to no effect, longterm, because Facebook has the momentum and Google, try as hard as they want to stop it, will not be able to, any more than Alta Vista or Infoseek were able to stop Google once they figured out that their lunch was eaten. Google will be around for a long time, I'm not saying they will go away, but Facebook will be around too. And Google will have a hard time catching up to them.  Long-term, however they both have problems because advertising is on its way to being obsolete. Facebook is just another step along the path. Advertising will get more and more targeted until it disappears, because perfectly targeted advertising is just information. And that's good!  8/3/06: "Information is welcome, advertising is offensive."
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By Michael Liedtke  PALO ALTO, Calif. - As Facebook.com's mastermind, Mark Zuckerberg is sitting on a potential gold mine that could make him the next Silicon Valley whiz kid to strike it rich.
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There's a fascinating debate today going on about Scoble and his Facebook data. Here's the story so far. Plaxo, on behalf of Scoble, ran a screen scraper on his Facebook account to download information about at least some of his Facebook friends. Facebook detected the scraper and turned off his account, with an email explaining that he had violated their terms of service. The debate: Who is right -- Scoble or Facebook? While there are certainly arguments that Facebook has some rightness, most of it, imho, is with Scoble. Sure, some of the data may "belong" to his friends, like their birthday and mail address. Technically of course the data doesn't belong to anyone, it's data about them, and many organizations have this data. Are bloggers really saying that organizations have more rights than people? Isn't blogging all about a level playing field? My bank knows my birthday and my email address. Why shouldn't Scoble? (Maybe he shouldn't.) Scoble called a few minutes ago. I asked what the consensus was. He said it was about 70 percent in his favor, 30 percent in Facebook's. I think we can win over the 30 percent by saying that there should be a system whereby people can decide how much information they want to share with Scoble, or people like Scoble, or me, or people like me, or BofA or the DEA, KGB or CIA. Further, that system is not Facebook, unless they change.  Now, I think there's a pretty good chance that Facebook will change and give Scoble his data and turn his account back on. I think Facebook wants to give us access to our data, but if they just turned the feature on, there would be a shitstorm, kind of like the one that's raging right now. Except this time Facebook has defenders, which they must find refreshing, because every time there's been a shitstorm around Facebook they've always been seen as 100 percent evil by most people. (Not by me, btw.) Maybe they're getting smart there over at Facebook. Maybe they will relent, kind of admit they were wrong, and secretly be happy that they got to open their network up some more.  However, if Facebook doesn't open up and allow people a system to say who can access what information, we still have to create that system somehow. Google could have done it, but they didn't. Same with Yahoo or Microsoft. These companies don't want to empower the users, but if they studied history, they'd see that the evolution of computers always comes in fits and starts. A period when the technology is new and people are snowed by the companies and let them have full control. Gradually people understand what's going on, and figure out they're being screwed but they accept it. And then explosively the whole thing disintegrates in a new layer of technology.  It's a big effin loop we're in. One of these times around one of the companies that feels (incorrectly) that they have a lock on their users, will voluntarily give it up and be a leader in Generation N+1. I've never seen it happen, but in theory I think it could.  In other words, Apple and Microsoft could have invented the web instead of TBL. DEC and Data General could have invented the personal computer instead of Apple and Microsoft (I know this is a simplification, there were lots of individuals and small companies that did it.) And IBM could have invented the minicomputer instead of DEC and Data General. And btw, the NY Times and CNN could have invented blogging and RSS.  So Facebook has the opportunity to be a crossover company, part of the next generation -- or a last gasp of the generation that's about to run out of gas. It's their choice. And it's fitting somehow that Scoble is the poster child for users in this cycle.
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TechMeme really likes Friday evening's Monkey piece, it's been #1 for almost 24 hours. Even if people still use the Social Graph term, it may have done some good by asking the question -- what's the difference between a network and a graph? In math there is no difference, a network is a graph and vice versa.  I got one thing wrong, apparently the term came from Facebook, presumably as a way of separating what they do from their predecessors.  Dan Farber reported in May. "Zuckerberg describes the Facebook core function that the new third-party applications can tap into as a 'social graph,' the network of connections and relationships between people on the service." Google Trends comparison of "social network" vs "social graph." Fred Wilson posted a comment pointing to a post where he wondered what the graph thing was all about. His post was one that inspired me to write my piece. Buzzwords and phrases are useful if they describe something new. For example, I remember when platform was new, but I didn&#185;t object to it, because it explained a concept that we needed a word for. Today it's still much in use, and there's little or no confusion about what it means. I was doing audio blog posts before we had the term podcast, and I totally got behind it because we needed a word for what we were doing. But social graph is not needed, it makes something simple sound complicated, and we totally need it to sound simple if the problems are going to get solved. They&#185;re not trivial problems, they&#185;ve been there since the Internet outgrew academia and started being used for commercial purposes. Another problem with new names for old things is that it tends to push aside the pioneers and makes it sound like newcomers are not also-rans. Fred had a reasonable gripe as a backer of Wasabe when Mint started getting credit for being a first mover. At least they didn&#185;t have the chutzpah to try to make it a trend and give it a buzzword.  Someone is being pushed aside with the term &#179;social graph&#178; likely some competitors of Facebook like MySpace and LinkedIn, and some pioneers are going to lose credit for their innovation if it takes root. It may still take root, but I felt I had to say something. BTW, the title of the post contains a grammatic error because I changed the title to monkey from something else and didn't look carefully at the resulting title.
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Social networking sites like Facebook have wooed millions of users with their easy format for keeping in touch but left them navigating the pitfalls of interacting online -- is it really private?
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To be, or not to be: Now Facebook users can decide.
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There was a dream that was web 2.0...sob Comment Silicon Valley's onanistic elements have been in vinegar-stroke mode for an age over the tussle between Google and Microsoft to invest in $15bn profit-lite social networking phenomenon Facebook.â¦
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First to Facebook were the teens. Then came the money, the market researchers and the media. And now come . . . the academics.
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Belated move to counter Facebook MySpace will open up to third party developers within the next few months.â¦
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Blog: Interested developers and entrepreneurs get together to talk about what they want to do with the Facebook Platform.
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With Facebook slowly creeping up on MySpace, is there room for two social networking sites?
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The balance of power in social networking is moving from the Web site to the user, and that could be accelerated with a new tool released Friday by Google -- a Social Graph API (application programming interface).
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Never mind your profile. Social networking sites are tracking what you do and buy, and the you they see may not be the you you really want everyone else to see. From Wired magazine.
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MySpace has an impressive lead today, but things can change quickly in the fluid world of mass-market social networking sites. Just ask Friendster.