Monday
May032010
Why I Am Not Worried About Facebook Controlling My Web Life
Monday, May 3, 2010 at 4:19AM
A lot of people are really upset with Facebook. Steven Hodson of Shooting At Bubbles has written numerous posts on the matter, and so have many others.
Quite a few people have asked for my opinion on Facebook's latest social moves, and I haven't really given a straight answer to any of them. At first I thought this was because I haven't had time to think it all through. Turns out (surprise!), I was wrong. It wasn't that I didn't have time to think it all through, it was because I simply didn't care.
As far as I know, Facebook is not doing anything "bad" with my data, and all in all, they are actually making my web experience better. After all, it is nice having all my friend suggestions with Pandora, as Robert Scoble pointed out. Plus, I lead a rather public life anyways, and anything I want private I simply don't publish, and IMO, more people should follow that line of logic. Still, this isn't the real reason why I don't care. The real reason I don't care is because Facebook is simply the intertubes latest play thing.
Look, I haven't been on the web for long, but I am not stupid. By tomorrow, someone could make a service that could displace Facebook's dominance within the next two years. After all, I remember the days when many tech bloggers said that Facebook would never touch Myspace in terms of reaching us teens and displacing them as the number one social network. I also recall them saying it with such a definitive attitude, it was hard not to believe them.
Whoops.
From my perspective, Facebook's dominance, while powerful and controversial today, will be moot by tomorrow. That isn't to say that y'all shouldn't care, someone needs to, or one of these days a company is truly going to cross the line. So I will let my buddy Steven make sure we all keep our eyes and ears open to Facebook's latest "shinnagins", while I sit here quietly, watching as some new service takes over the web while us bloggers profess that Facebook will never be beat.
Meanwhile, I will listen to some awesome songs suggested to me by my friends on Pandora, and at the very least, remain entertained.
Quite a few people have asked for my opinion on Facebook's latest social moves, and I haven't really given a straight answer to any of them. At first I thought this was because I haven't had time to think it all through. Turns out (surprise!), I was wrong. It wasn't that I didn't have time to think it all through, it was because I simply didn't care.
As far as I know, Facebook is not doing anything "bad" with my data, and all in all, they are actually making my web experience better. After all, it is nice having all my friend suggestions with Pandora, as Robert Scoble pointed out. Plus, I lead a rather public life anyways, and anything I want private I simply don't publish, and IMO, more people should follow that line of logic. Still, this isn't the real reason why I don't care. The real reason I don't care is because Facebook is simply the intertubes latest play thing.
Look, I haven't been on the web for long, but I am not stupid. By tomorrow, someone could make a service that could displace Facebook's dominance within the next two years. After all, I remember the days when many tech bloggers said that Facebook would never touch Myspace in terms of reaching us teens and displacing them as the number one social network. I also recall them saying it with such a definitive attitude, it was hard not to believe them.
Whoops.
From my perspective, Facebook's dominance, while powerful and controversial today, will be moot by tomorrow. That isn't to say that y'all shouldn't care, someone needs to, or one of these days a company is truly going to cross the line. So I will let my buddy Steven make sure we all keep our eyes and ears open to Facebook's latest "shinnagins", while I sit here quietly, watching as some new service takes over the web while us bloggers profess that Facebook will never be beat.
Meanwhile, I will listen to some awesome songs suggested to me by my friends on Pandora, and at the very least, remain entertained.
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