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October 9, 2007

Facebook Versus the Web

Erick Schonfeld

83 comments »

picture-193.pngOne of the knocks against Facebook is that it is a somewhat closed, proprietary platform. Here’s how the argument goes: The ultimate technology platform, in contrast, is the Web itself. It is open and ultimately will triumph over all other platforms, including Facebook. Any innovations that take hold in closed environments are quickly replicated on the open Web. At some point network effects take over, and the utility of those innovations on the Web supercede those on the original platform.

Anil Dash furthers this argument in a post today:

Think of the web, of the Internet itself, as water. Proprietary platforms based on the web are ice cubes. They can, for a time, suspend themselves above the web at large. But over time, they only ever melt into the water. And maybe they make it better when they do.

So how long does Facebook have before it melts into the Web?

A: That won’t start to happen until you can take your friends (i.e., your social graph) with you.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 9th, 2007 at 1:08 pm and is filed under Web 2.0 News & Ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. Cool

    October 9th, 2007 at 1:12 pm

    Interesting way to think about it…

  2. Sam Donaldson

    October 9th, 2007 at 1:15 pm

    Nice, we got our next duncan riley.

  3. Alaska Miller

    October 9th, 2007 at 1:20 pm

    The same amount of time it took people to realize how limited AOL was.

  4. Someone

    October 9th, 2007 at 1:20 pm

    It’s not about “taking my friends with me”.

    My friends exist independently of Facebook– I see them all the time, talk to them on the phone, IM them, SMS them, email them.

    It’s about being able to manage the data we share on Facebook in a decentralized way. It’s the tools that make Facebook what it is, not the friends. I don’t need Facebook to tell me who my friends are, I need it to help me stay in touch with them.

  5. Slappenstance

    October 9th, 2007 at 1:23 pm

    Facebook apps are all useless. Superpoke is not the future of software/web apps. Facebook itself is extremely overrated. The “social graph” seems to migrate to the coolest new fad or tech.

    Zuckerberg should’ve sold for a billion.

  6. Steve Ballmer

    October 9th, 2007 at 1:25 pm

    One Knock?
    Konck, knock, knock, knock, knock,…….
    The main problem with FaceBook is that the backend source binaries convergence don’t equate to parameters congruent with 32 bit code limiters in parallel progressive core syntax translators of more than translitertant coding ques!

    http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

  7. Alaska Miller

    October 9th, 2007 at 1:25 pm

    AOL = Facebook.

    AOL Profiles = Facebook profiles. AOL Mail = Facebook mail. AOL Channels = Facebook apps.

    The biggest coupe de grace that AOL managed to stumble into was instant messaging. They conceived of the Buddy List idea and for years made it closed. People tried to startup external applications to hook into AOL IM but attempts were all rejected.

    Eventually people realized at just how shitty the AOL world was. How bad AOL Mail was. How bad the AOL channels were. How bad the AOL Chat Rooms… okay not so much the chat rooms. But everything else. Eventually AOL had to relent. IM is now open (or as open as it can be with a megacorporation lording over it) and AOL became slowly a subscription service to an addon service to your broadband to just a content company and now an advertising company.

    All of that took 20 years. Facebook doesn’t have the scale that AOL nor an actual business model. I hope to god I don’t have to be hearing about Facebook hype 20 years from now.

  8. Alaska Miller

    October 9th, 2007 at 1:29 pm

    @4

    That’s true. People realized that every possible service AOL provides, the Internet has a better version. It was like a wading pool compared to the Olympic lap pool.

    Take your social graph with you? That’s like saying taking your Buddy List with you. NO ONE NEEDS IT. I know damn well who my close friends are, I see them in real life all the time.

  9. Your Daddy

    October 9th, 2007 at 1:36 pm

    Part of the reason for the bloated valuation is that you can’t think of anything else to talk about other than FB!

  10. Tim Street

    October 9th, 2007 at 1:36 pm

    The ice will melt into the water when someone launches a web browser that does all the things that Facebook does and more and everyone likes it more than Facebook.

  11. Dan Ackerman Greenberg

    October 9th, 2007 at 1:36 pm

    Seems to me like Facebook’s goal should be to entice developers (with openness, support, and $$) to create every conceivable app within the FB platform rather than outside of it, so that as an end-user, I’ll never have any reason (or desire) to “take my social graph elsewhere.”

    If everything happens in Facebook, and everything I do I do with my friends via FB, why should I ever go to this “internet” you speak of? I’ll just go to Facebook.

    Definitely see your point, though, and it will be interesting to see how this whole game changes when MySpace/Google/LinkedIn start opening up their own platforms.

    Dan Ackerman Greenberg
    Stanford ‘08
    http://www.ackermangreenberg.com

  12. HappySlappy

    October 9th, 2007 at 1:38 pm

    TECHFACECRUNCH!

  13. Dan Birdwhistell

    October 9th, 2007 at 1:40 pm

    You all are still missing something big here. Facebook is the next iteration of the web. The standard web is crowded and ugly and messy and full of junk; it is arranged around entities putting stuff out there that hopefully attracts eyeballs. Facebook is doing it the other way around - making a “home” for people, and then slowly letting the good elements of the internet in, while keeping the rabble out.

    The web will not get much better - apps that start with people will

  14. Chris

    October 9th, 2007 at 1:46 pm

    These are all self-imposed paradigms and nothing more. They represent nothing in the context of reality. There are no walls that keep users in facebook.

  15. Chris

    October 9th, 2007 at 1:48 pm

    I think Silicon Valley should be careful with their skewing of peoples’ perceptions for profit. It will eventually turn back on them.

  16. mark zuckerberg

    October 9th, 2007 at 1:57 pm

    Well, please let me reiterate facebook’s mission statement again.

    “Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you.”

    For this reason it is simple to make comparisons between facebook and the web. However I believe that it is audacious to assume that there will be a point in time where the facebook platform is ever “melted” into the web, when in fact our end goal is to recreate the web itself.

    You see, AOL had it coming because the web was open, easy to publish with, and was basically free. But now, the web has it coming. It’s challenger: Facebook.

    My goal is not one of riches, it is to create a new paradigm.

    -Mark

  17. Deals and Coupons

    October 9th, 2007 at 2:02 pm

    Another post about FB?

  18. Jim

    October 9th, 2007 at 2:05 pm

    OMG. A TechCrunch post about someone else’s blog post mentioning “Facebook”.

    Can we pleeeease have a week without mentioning Facebook??? Just a week.

    Seriously, are you guys really that obsessed with Facebook that you had to post about it 62 times in this current calendar year? And we’re barely into October.

    This post was really not worth our time or attention. Is there an RSS feed service that can filter out crap stories like this?

  19. theharmonyguy

    October 9th, 2007 at 2:10 pm

    It’s totally about the social graph. I’m personally tired of people talking about Facebook as an evil walled garden or the next AOL, and here’s why: Facebook is not duplicating the Internet. Facebook is all about the social graph. By that I mean:

    1. Facebook is serving a limited purpose. Bloggers talk about not being able to post content that everyone can access. But Facebook isn’t about posting content for everyone - it’s about sharing content on your social graph. You want to post public content? Start a blog - there are plenty of ways to do that outside of Facebook. Facebook was never meant to replace all other web sites and services.

    2. Facebook ought to have walls. I don’t want everyone to see certain items of information about me. I sometimes want to share content with only my friends. I appreciate the fact that Facebook is a “walled garden” of sorts, since Facebook is about my social graph. If I want to start a public discussion about an issue, I’ll visit a public forum. But if I want to keep in touch with friends, I want to do so privately.

    3. Facebook builds on the Internet. People talk about “the Internet” eventually doing what Facebook does. But Facebook is using Internet technology to operate. FBML is simply a template system, FQL a simplified query system. They’re not that different from existing systems used to customize other Internet applications - yet I don’t see people criticizing, say, Smarty. They render HTML, XML, CSS, and JavaScript. Facebook handles social graph functions, and applications run in a limited context that interacts with these functions. How is this much different from, say, a Joomla plug-in?

    Facebook is a way to use the Internet to do a limited number of things, all involving the social graph. If I need to search the Internet, I will never visit Facebook - I’ll use a search engine. If I want to get general technology news, I come to sites like TechCrunch, not Facebook.

    The only way I see Facebook “melting” into the Web is a decentralized social networking system similar to what some people have been envisioning… but I think even then there are issues that will prevent Facebook from ever going away entirely and that could ultimately hinder the decentralized approach.

    This is not a closed environment. Anyone (generally speaking) can join Facebook. Anyone can create a Facebook application (and doing so barely requires more than HTML, CSS, and some server-side language).

    Facebook is not duplicating the Internet. Facebook is all about the social graph.

  20. phenom

    October 9th, 2007 at 2:11 pm

    It is interesting how people think. Appreciate it.

    http://vidsonly.blogspot.com

  21. mmt

    October 9th, 2007 at 2:13 pm

    Agree completely. Facebook is dead long-term as a closed environment. Been saying that for months.

    http://www.bestcashcow.com/tec.....r-facebook

  22. Kumar Pandey

    October 9th, 2007 at 2:14 pm

    As a novice participant of social network I recently created an account on both facebook and linkedin.

    On facebook I was alerted of a friends’s last status as “Looking for a dining table” which I presume was the update from his iphone letting his network know that he is dining out.

    On linked in I was connected to some of the folks I had worked before but never had time to catch up etc.

    As for me I’ve since then spent 90% of the social network time on linkedin and less than 10% on facebook.

    I guess I represent the suburban dwelling high tech worker family man which would have obvious bias to linkedin but I’m still trying to fathom the
    hype surrounding facebook. The vampire poke I thought was a bit silly even to figure out what it meant.

  23. Pete

    October 9th, 2007 at 2:19 pm

    Was that really M. Zuckerberg? Dude, cash in!! I mean, facebook is *really* sweet, but “a new paradigm”? What, have you been reading Kuhn? Your assessment of the whole situation seems somewhat delusional.

  24. Boris M. Silver

    October 9th, 2007 at 2:23 pm

    @19: you are on the money

    The reality of it is, my generation will continue using Facebook for social functions and the rest of the Internet for non-social functions.

    Flickr is for photos
    Google is for search
    YouTube is for videos

    Facebook is for online social interactions

    I find it funny how everyone is reacting to Facebook as if it came out of the blue and turned into this mega superstar overnight. The only place where Facebook is a “fad” is on tech blogs like TechCrunch. Outside of this bubble of tech blogs and web 2.0 junkies, people’s feelings about Facebook really haven’t changed at all. It’s been on every high school and college kids radar screen for the past couple of years. It’s not like the masses are hyped about Facebook and all this Social OS talk — it’s just the people on here.

    Try stepping outside the Tech world for a second and you’ll see what I mean.

  25. theharmonyguy

    October 9th, 2007 at 2:23 pm

    One more comment:

    Your headline is exactly what I’m talking about - it’s not “Facebook vs. The Web”. Facebook is not competing with the Web any more than Flickr or Blogger. Facebook is a part of the Web for performing certain functions, and it competes with other Web sites that offer serve similar functions, such as Myspace. Facebook is not going to make the Web go away - and vice versa.

  26. theharmonyguy

    October 9th, 2007 at 2:25 pm

    @24: Thanks Boris, looks like we posted at the same time… as you can see, I agree. :) “The reality of it is, my generation will continue using Facebook for social functions and the rest of the Internet for non-social functions.” Good way of putting it. Though you’ll still find “social” functions on the rest of the Internet, but that gets back to definitions - your point is right on.

  27. Ben

    October 9th, 2007 at 2:27 pm

    This is what I think will limit Facebook’s growth:
    I think distributed web application platforms will move *towards* a single standard based on human behavior and communication. Imagine a system that consolidates your mobile phone with your email with you contact list, and connects people in any given region. It is not a completely open system, but it is comprehensive, facilitates a winning business model, and should gain critical mass at the most critical point in human communication technology - distributed, mobile applications.

    Facebook is neat, but where are the useful services? At least Google has documents, phone number consolidation, maps, and a mobile platform on the way. Social interaction has to be about *something*, not just virtual Vodka Cranberry or even virtual sports prediction pools. And lets not forget that enterprises like documents, databases and security.

    So I think I agree with the idea behind this post. I think social networking will move away from very limited systems towards more comprehensive and flexible systems.

  28. Andrew

    October 9th, 2007 at 2:35 pm

    Social graph? FFS its a social network. “Social graph” is an extremely clever use of a mathematical label to make a way of storing data sound fantastic and new. Well done Mr Z.

    Moving on, I’m closer to Slappenstance than theharmonyguy … Facebook need to tread carefully. No they’re not going anywhere fast, but there are allot of smart people doing a lot of smart things out there.

    Ask most people why they’re on FB they will say “because all my friends are on it” NOT because “the FB API and applications are really cool”. IF the core activist usergroup of FB one day jumps ship, once enough of them do, the lemmings (i.e. the other 80% of users) likely will.

    Of course, its never that simple, but its not impossible. It will come down to whether FB can keep up the pace of innovation and dynamism, as they grow from a start-up into an internet dinosaur.

    Ultimately, Web 3.0 will one day arrive - and that means open standards, data that interopting systems can understand in context and the ability of users to aggregate their social data between services and indeed their profiles. OpenID is one tiny amoeba step towards this direction, but expect one of the attempts at microformatting in this space such as http://gmpg.org/xfn/ (or something a little for intelligent) to eventually stick to the wall. Then we’ll get to see how closed or open FB really is.

  29. Ben

    October 9th, 2007 at 2:37 pm

    In order for Google to compete in social networking, I think they better figure out their privacy features. The main reason I was willing to use Facebook: privacy features so people-of-the-past don’t spam me or my friends and associates don’t see me.

    No, social graphs are not suddenly going to morph into an open standard for many reasons. But social graphs are going to center around actual, useful communication and tasks. That is Google’s advantage over Facebook.

  30. Eduardo Giansante

    October 9th, 2007 at 2:38 pm

    great thinking.. looks like facebook is trying to inovate the way we use the web… moved by us not just as “web 2.0″… It remembers me that book wrote by Steven Jhonson “emergency”, where the coletive intelligence succeded by emergent behaviors, I mean, what happens when a interconnected system of simple elements auto-organize itselfs to create a more intelligent behavior…

  31. Fake Dave McClure

    October 9th, 2007 at 2:44 pm

    Wow, yet another Facebook article. Keep them coming TechCrunch, because really, this is all that matters to me.

  32. tiffany

    October 9th, 2007 at 2:46 pm

    what i don’t get about facebook or the facebook hype is this: most of its functionality is and can be duplicated elsewhere. yes facebook excels at offering an integrated im/messaging/games/forum platform (maybe “excels” is too strong. i personally hate the thing).

    but it’s value lies in how people use it — to meet friends on campus and keep in touch with their other friends.

    now what happens when facebook’s users get over the identity that they’ve created for themselves in this space? or when they realize they’ve outgrown their facebook friends and want to start fresh? or when they want to divorce themselves from their “so-and-so has the best tits on campus” reputation (i b.s. you not: there’s a group with a similar name in the american u. network)?

  33. Don Wilson

    October 9th, 2007 at 2:51 pm

    #2 made me laugh, however I think Erick has been pretty good about posting.

  34. Gilou

    October 9th, 2007 at 2:52 pm

    We can just hope that they will learn from AOL’s mistakes…

  35. Erik Dungan

    October 9th, 2007 at 2:52 pm

    I agree that it will merge into the web itself. Why not have decentralized “social graph” servers just like we have decentralized name servers for domainIP translation? Why not use OpenID?

    If FB was smart, they’d spearhead such open initiatives.

  36. Ben

    October 9th, 2007 at 2:53 pm

    @tiffany
    I agree with you mostly. Social interaction should be about something. So social networking should be integrated with useful web services.

    But I will disagree about the “biggest tits on campus” thing you mentioned. It seems to me that the service provided by Facebook is online gossip. People want it. What a good social network should do is provide privacy tools and/or features that allow a person to recreate his/her/both identity without switching accounts or social networks. So I should be able to remove my “best ass in the universe” label completely, and block whomever I want to block. etc. Couple that with good core web services and users will be locked in.

  37. Peter White

    October 9th, 2007 at 2:56 pm

    Interesting way of seeing things.

    What can possibly replace social networking sites?

    I don’t have the answer but as long as people like to share things with there friends online social networking will be there.

  38. Ben

    October 9th, 2007 at 2:56 pm

    I just have a question for everyone about OpenID. What would motivate consumers or organizations to demand an OpenID standard? Aren’t there barriers to such an idea? What prevents a company like Google from creating and maintaining a proprietary ID standard, even more comprehensive than the current OpenID standards?

  39. Amy Wilsch

    October 9th, 2007 at 3:08 pm

    @Pete… we can call it the Tragedy of the Facebook (common) Spaces. :)

  40. David Hersh

    October 9th, 2007 at 3:35 pm

    Just how did Zuckerberg convince everyone that your social graph (or as Andrew #28 points out, your social network) is comprised of just your direct contacts? He talks about Facebook mirroring the real world social graph, but in the real world my social network isn’t limited to my direct contacts, nor does it contain the thousands of strangers who happen to share the same city, school or employer as I do. Contact lists on Facebook may be a little less cluttered with online buddies than those on MySpace, but beyond that I don’t think Facebook is really doing much at all to mirror your real-world social network.

    As people have pointed out above, contact lists are fairly portable. A true online representation of your real-world social network probably wouldn’t be though.

  41. Doug

    October 9th, 2007 at 3:43 pm

    “A: That won’t start to happen until you can take your friends (i.e., your social graph) with you.”

    Google is going to take the first step to publishing the social graph in November, to “let a thousand social networks bloom.” It’s only Orkut’s social graph at this point, but could point the way to a future that is threatening to Facebook.

    Why is no one mentioning that?

    http://www.techcrunch.com/2007.....ing-plans/

    Led by Brad Fitzpatrick:
    http://bradfitz.com/social-graph-problem/

  42. Brady

    October 9th, 2007 at 4:02 pm

    Is there an OpenID initiative equivalent for social graphs?

  43. Mark

    October 9th, 2007 at 4:19 pm

    good post

  44. Fake Mark Zuckerberg

    October 9th, 2007 at 4:39 pm

    This is preponderous. I am working on joint partnership with Microsoft to buy the internet.

    Up yours Eric Schonfield whatever

  45. Shane

    October 9th, 2007 at 5:04 pm

    Yo Dan,
    Just a suggestion for ideaCV, how about a solution option where if an idea or problem already has a viable solution, people can direct them to it.
    Good looking site.
    Shane

  46. Pete

    October 9th, 2007 at 5:19 pm

    @ Brady … there seems to be a lot of talk about “social network portability”. It’s pretty interesting; is that what you meant?

  47. David

    October 9th, 2007 at 5:19 pm

    Facebook is fun on a personal level, however I have yet to see a business application ( other than social media marketing ) to have any use. When I look at the number of unanswered invites, it only makes me want to login less often.

  48. Dan Ackerman Greenberg

    October 9th, 2007 at 5:20 pm

    Shane,

    Right on. Thanks.

    BBQ this weekend, I’ll call you.

    Dan Ackerman Greenberg
    http://www.ackermangreenberg.com

  49. Internet Guru

    October 9th, 2007 at 5:32 pm

    FB solved a simple college level problem of connecting to friends on a campus. It became cool to one single market/campus, moved to like-minded markets/campuses, became cool with people who “worked” on a “campus”. The lesson learned is; focus on campuses to get big.

  50. Aswath

    October 9th, 2007 at 5:40 pm

    @4 Someone & @41 Brady:

    Take a look at OAuth. It will allow for easy sharing of data between applications. There are strong indicators that hint that Google will announce use of OAuth on November 5th.

    http://www.mocaedu.com/mt/archives/000324.html

  51. Anil

    October 9th, 2007 at 5:47 pm

    @Brady #41, you asked “Is there an OpenID initiative equivalent for social graphs?”

    It’s in the process of being created. At Six Apart, where OpenID was originally invented, we’ve begun opening up the social graph so that anybody can build on top of it, as well as working on OAuth to make it easier to integrate your various applications.

    You can read more here:
    http://www.sixapart.com/about/.....ng_th.html

    Or here:
    http://www.sixapart.com/about/.....e_you.html

  52. Tom

    October 9th, 2007 at 6:40 pm

    I will still be your friend.

  53. From someone with actual friends...

    October 9th, 2007 at 6:59 pm

    Everyone I know is on MySpace, they range in age from 23-40 (about 250 of them). I am not on any SN, but my job requires I know lots about the SNs. “Fuck you, I have enough friends” was a t-shirt we made on Dead tour when I was 22 in ‘90. Facebook is a tech-geek/ college kid thing (mostly for the anal retentive “web design aesthetics” folk. We are not poor, sorry; boarding schools, ivy league, hedge funds, etc. Too old, too inebriated, or too lazy, it does not matter.

    McClure couldn’t get laid in a whore house.

  54. bonelyfish

    October 9th, 2007 at 7:22 pm

    Very tired of people religious talk about “open”?

    Isn’t it Facebook an innovation in the “open” web? What is the use of open web to common Joe&Jane who make up 90% of world population. Is there any problem as long as it works and is free?

    Its not a TV show that “good” vs. “bad”; it can be “close” turns into “open”, and augmenting the web.

  55. Steve Ballmer

    October 9th, 2007 at 7:38 pm

    FaceBook thingy is the death of the web! Boycott it!

    http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

  56. Ryan

    October 9th, 2007 at 8:11 pm

    Hmm…. Closed and proprietary? Everyone is terrified because developers are moving to the platform in droves. What do you do when your competitor releases a product that puts them a year ahead? Start the FUD machine :-)

  57. dave mcclure

    October 9th, 2007 at 8:50 pm

    @52: “McClure couldn’t get laid in a whore house.”

    um, wtf? did someone crawl up your ass and leave my business card or something? sorry don’t need a whorehouse… got a wife & two kids. and they’re a lot brighter than you are.

    >>”Facebook is a tech-geek/ college kid thing”

    wow, not only are you mean as an ice weasel, you’re about as dumb. you might want to check some recent stats before you make blatantly ignorant & incorrect assessments of the demographic. US is broadening quickly outside 25, and UK & Canada were *never* concentrated in the college demo, cuz they didn’t start there.

    my advice: ease up on the insults, bone up on the metrics.

  58. garage guy

    October 9th, 2007 at 10:06 pm

    Can’t wait for the next new thing to supplant the facebook worship……everyone is drinking the koolaid again. I miss the good ol’ days when there were real companies like theglobe.com that were all the rage. Valuation models are all about the assumptions….garbage in, garbage out.

  59. Brady

    October 9th, 2007 at 10:35 pm

    @50 Aswath

    Thanks. Interesting link.

    OAuth seems to be a way for the user to control access between applications. So leveraging this, will there be an “Open Graph” connecting OpenID users that is accessible by any social network? I’m assuming the networks would manage data about the users and relationships, but not the relationships themselves.

    I’m clearly missing something here, but what it is about the facebook API that limits facebook from being the authority on the graph, user name, and password, and allowing 3rd parties to have full control of all other aspects of their network or application. Someone needs to own/store the social graph, right? Why not facebook?

  60. David Litsky

    October 9th, 2007 at 10:37 pm

    The “web community” is focused on the details, while Zuckerberg, Gates, and others are focusing on the 40,000 foot panoramic. Creating a web site is easy, all you need is someone that can use a coding widget, and a good support staff to do your design, build your database, and come up with the business plan. Facebook is similar to AOL in that it is a walled garden, but that is what the general consumer wants. They want a one-stop shop where they can send e-mail, catch up on news, chat with friends, and act like a kid again. Facebook has a strong infrastructure and provides their customers with exactly what they need.

    On the web, all of your data is indexed, filtered, shifted, aggregated, packaged, and devilvered to mass marketers 2.0. Google takes a 40% cut so it is in their best interest to shove advertising at you wherever you go — your mailbox (email), your television (YouTube), and your newspaper (websites like TC). The current “web” which is chock full of in-your-face advertising is not what was envisioned by visionaries like Christopher Locke and David Weinberger when they wrote the cluetrain manifesto. What they envisioned were web forums, which have easily replaced RIP graphics and multipart newsgroup threads.

    Take vBulletin (http://www.vbulletin.com/), the top web forum software around. It made it there by being simple, rugged, and fully customizable not by looking pretty and acting flashy. Forums are a one stop shop where you can start open threaded conversations, send private messages, track who is talking to you, play games, and read news on your favorite subjects. These communities were pioneers in the wild frontier of the web. In the beginning, many of these forums were open allowing people to post anonymous comments under fictitious names similar to newsgroups. The problem was that they were vulnerable to spammers and inflammatory posters. To start the filtering process, many forums began to require a username and password to access the site. Users could still be anonymous, but it gave the operator of the site a ring of control, to make sure that things didn’t get out of hand. In addition, content held within their walled gardens is often barricaded from the tentacles of Google’s advertising spiders.

    What makes the forum world so special is that you become a real family that cares about each other, even if they show it in a very different way. You are surrounded by siblings — with a traditional male to female ratio of 200:1, that aren’t afraid to call you out on your BS, make fun of you for it, and never move on. The problem is that these communities work too well and users like interacting with people too much. As the web became populated in the web 1.0 era and through the cycle that has brought us to the end of web 2.0 era, bandwidth started to become more scarce. Much like the end of cheap oil in the 70s, the cost to operate these communities in the mid 00s substantially increased. The larger communities hung around with context ads, banner ads, donations, and other ways to defer the costs. Sadly, many of the smaller communities that had 20-200 members folded and they became nomads of the vBulletin circuit.

    Enter Facebook which is special because it acts as a big, open, vBulletin forum. Their goal with the social graph is to reconnect with true internet friends and bring our offline friends into the simple web that made us early adopters. On Facebook, you can control how little or how much of your private information is displayed to other members — while remaining invisible to outsiders. This provides a safe location for you to discuss your next business idea with Jenny from high school who is now a banker, Mike from college who works as a software engineer, and Bill from the bar who wants to write you a big check. Why Facebook will succeed is that they are providing this service for free — including the bandwidth bill, in return for modest advertising.

    Sidebar about bandwidth — has the web community forgotten that Facebook doubled their user base in less than six months, and only had one hiccup? What Facebook did is grew organically creating headroom for an exponential amount of new users, per user that they were adding. For example by planning for 100 people per user that they added in the beginning, with 5 million members they could easily scale to 500 million.

    Facebook is trying to build a better web where its users bring the ideas and labor, and they provide the infrastructure to help you succeed. Take the fbFunds debate that has been on the minds of Uber Bloggers like Jason Calacanis. People like Jason want the web to remain open so that he and other like-minded businessmen can poach your ideas and build them out faster than you with his venture capital. The fbFund is not looking for the next widget builder, but the visionary that needs access to widget builders so that they can revolutionize the platform. What Facebook has done is bring old school (think Plato’s Republic) business to the web.

    Business will not be replaced by an open web, but hire Vogon contractors to clear the path.

  61. Ben Standefer

    October 9th, 2007 at 11:47 pm

    I hate when people use analogies in arguments under the pretext that if they can find an analogy that demonstrates their argument, then their argument is an accurate assessment of the situation. This is not a rational assumption, as one can find/create an analogy to “explain” almost any situation. Analogies do not make an argument any more legitimate. Analogies should be used to convey an idea in familiar terms, not to justify its merit.

  62. Anon

    October 10th, 2007 at 12:07 am

    This is like reading youtube comments

  63. Fake Dave McClure

    October 10th, 2007 at 12:07 am

    Facebook pwns the internet easy. Zuck could take it down with a butter knife and some duct tape… n00bz…

  64. dOmi

    October 10th, 2007 at 12:49 am

    […] “A: That won’t start to happen until you can take your friends (i.e., your social graph) with you.”

    Thats exactly, what german startup http://noserub.com/ is working on.
    May be worth a look…

  65. Berlin

    October 10th, 2007 at 12:55 am

    Facebook vs the Web - …exactly what I was thinking when someone from the audience asked Zuckerberg about OpenID. OpenID is the web. So I’d be surprised if FB adopts openID. Then again, MS is developing InfoCards for OpenID. So if MS buys a stake at FB, can Gates and company pressure FB into adopting openID?

  66. dave mcclure

    October 10th, 2007 at 1:08 am

    dude who i must have cut off on 101 somewhere: quit outsourcing the Fake Dave McClure writing to Mechanical Turk, get a real fucking budget & fire the numbnutz you hired to stalk my comment stream 24×7, and get someone with half a goddamn brain to write for the fake me.

    seriously.

    if i’m going to waste time on this shit, it should at least be fun to read the [wish it were] snappy repartee coming back at me. right now it’s pretty obvious you offshored to some dipshit faux-et laureate who can’t write an interesting line of prose to save his 3rd-world ass.

    i hear Tamils & Bulgarians have a rich literary tradition… why don’t you look one of them up, and maybe this will get more interesting.

    either that, or you’re a pathetic first-person hater who’s trying to write his way out of paper bag… one that’s made of that diploma you got in the mail from the University of Phoenix.

    get with the fucking program, Yo… cowboy up or go home.

  67. fake dave mcclure

    October 10th, 2007 at 3:37 am

    I am the master of cliches! Fear my deficient articulation!

  68. Blake Brannon

    October 10th, 2007 at 5:45 am

    I’ll give them till 2010.

  69. Sean

    October 10th, 2007 at 6:41 am

    Beyond just friendships, everyone’s at the mercy of these data silos to keep giving us free access to our own content, even though it’s in the Terms of Service that they don’t have to. What happens if one of these services (holding on to pictures of say… college graduation) decides that it’s not going to host that data for free anymore, and now our only copy of that content is locked and we have to pay to free it?

    There are open source projects that are working on also freeing the data from your social networks (content like pictures, blog entries, etc.).

    Check out http://silosync.com/wiki if you’re into that sort of thing.

    The part of the movement focused just on the friendship-connections can be found on the google group:
    http://groups.google.com/group.....ortability

  70. Simon

    October 10th, 2007 at 6:50 am

    I’m sure the folks at Facebook appreciate being given so much cred that their competition is now the web itself, but for the rest of us, it’s deja vu. Does anyone else remember hearing statements like “HTML is dead - it’s all XML from here on”. Whatever dude.

  71. sanmat

    October 10th, 2007 at 7:32 am

    I totally agree. Facebook is different and its not time for it to melt. Its now taking a different turn around. Keep watching and see the progress on web 2.0

  72. Will Callaghan

    October 10th, 2007 at 7:34 am

    I too am getting sick of Facebook stories and speculation.

    How about bigging up UK content and tech companies for a change? The more people talk about them, the greater the buzz, the more revenue streams open up, the more we can innovate.

    TechCrunch UK ought to devote a corner to UK startups and help nurture them.

  73. Aswath

    October 10th, 2007 at 8:26 am

    @58 Brady

    There is no reason why Facebook be used to store data. The question arises when one of your real life friends refuses to join Facebook but you two want to share the digital world. If the two networks allow APIs for exchanging information then OAuth provides a way to authenticate such API requests without compromising authentication credentials.

    It is very likely that large networks may see little need to participate in this. But given this methodology, there is no incentive to join any particular network. You could be running your own network. This is a breakthrough.

  74. Omadsense

    October 10th, 2007 at 9:00 am

    I agree with #3
    Any site that believes that closing or enclosing it’s members will help it survive should take a page from AOL. If they even remember what AOL is….LOL
    Even myspace seems to be thinking just becuase it’s big it can keep it’s users from using anything that may cuase people to leave thier site - well, if you clinch your fist more sand only escapes…….. The internet thrives on it’s freedom.

  75. Zuckerborg

    October 10th, 2007 at 1:35 pm

    - FOAF
    - XFN
    - Mozilla’s The Coop

    The open-source transformation of social network couldn’t happen soon enough

  76. Derek Scruggs

    October 10th, 2007 at 3:02 pm

    That won’t start to happen until you can take your friends (i.e., your social graph) with you.

    Which will only happen when the majority of people who actually care about that are people who don’t call it their “social graph.”

  77. Rick

    October 10th, 2007 at 9:17 pm

    I’ll say when more than enough of moronic Facebook Apps are created and e-mail evolves into a Facebook like social graph.

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