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Monday
Feb082010
Facebook Will Centralize the Social Web
Young Urban ProfessionalMichael Arrington laments about about the decentralized nature of social content on TechCrunch today...
"The online social landscape today sort of feels to me like search did in 1999. It’s a mess, but we don’t complain much about it because we don’t know there’s a better way.
You might be sick of hearing this from me, but strongly believe that Facebook is the next Google. It took me a while to "get religion," but now I have it. Just as Google brought a simple way to search the web, my observation is that Facebook is poised to do the same for organizing and - this is key - centralizing social content
Google will continue to dominate "pull." But Facebook will aggregate content, make it social and rule "push." Using our social circle it will surface content that we care about just when we want it - and allow us to comment on it all. As more people use Facebook to connect, share and create, a network effect takes over - and the system get even smarter.
Here's an example. In my newsfeed today I saw an item from CNN about Sarah Palin. Within minutes it had dozens of comments. Some 20 minutes later it had 300 comments. Now that pales in comparison to the 2775 comments (as of this writing) that the actual story on CNN.com has. However, over time through Facebook Connect, I suspect this to become more cohesive so that you can follow the conversation in either place.
Facebook has done an extraordinary job at making social elegant, simple and organized for millions. Couple this with the search deal with Bing, I believe they will be a force to be reckoned with - one that challenges Google on every turf.
Reader Comments (28)
Steve, as you know I am very often with you in your predictions and analysis - but here I feel you might be wrong. First: as the web is hiding more and more within apps (not only on the iPhone, I am sure this is just the beginning) and become more and more embedded in services, I think there will be no room for a centralization anymore. And second: FB is a silo. And silos are very attractive on the short run, but not on the long run. See AOL. I see the point that FB is - now! - the operating system for our social lives. But I am sure it will not be for ever. And between playing farmville and organizing meetings with friends on one hand - and consuming news and other stuff on the other, there will be a difference for a long time.The splinternet thing is much more convincing for me.
I myself am getting increasingly tired and bored with Facebook. I have used it intensively for more than 1 year and have set up the account about 1 year earlier, but lately I feel it lost it's touch. I spend less and less time interacting with the site. It's probably all those changes they make, it's eroding my confidence.
I agree with most of what you've said here, Steve, but they don't seem to be doing the best job of keeping everyone happy when they move to new layouts as they did last week. Everyone uses facebook a little differently (one of its strengths) but when every individual is constantly re-learning how to use it, its stunts the overall platforms development to reaching the heights you've predicted for it. Myself, I've been spending the better part of the last 2 days trying to find what happened to my newsfeed filters that (as you'd pointed out in your previous post) are pretty important to making fb a central info hub for people. Well with the new layout, at least temporarily, that can't happen for me! And that's without even getting into how it's affecting the Farmville people JIn any case, I agree with you, but think that the layout upgrades need just a little more support that they're giving them to keep things on track.
Facebook seems to be getting more and more boring, and more difficult to use, as well as being far too spammy. If I want news I go to the sites I trust such as the BBC or the Guardian. The whole point of the internet is that it is decentralized. Maybe Facebook will become the next McDonalds of the internet, which is fine, but some of us are internet gourmets, and prefer a proper meal.
@Wolfgang, On apps, they will connect to Facebook and get social. On the silo, you are right - they typically lose. But there has never been one with 400M people. Geeks may split Facebook but not the mainstream anytime soon.
Is this the semantic web we have been promised?
Steve, we will see :) and in the meantime I am more than glad, Facebook finally took off here in Germany as well - much more possibilities for us comm folks than our local clones ;)
Go to the facebook tablets? Go to the 4th screen?
Steve,I'm in complete agreement. Like you, I've been trying to get my clients and network on board with this idea for a while. I've been calling it the 'fractalization of the web,' which, while it makes perfect sense to me, does not seem to be catching on as a phrase. Oh well, I'd rather have a good idea than a good name for it ;-)In any case, I think the central point is that people trust people and people act upon trust. With that in mind, it naturally follows that people would be more inclined to follow the content referrals of people within their network than those of robots. The title of my first article on this point last summer was "In the Future, the Web Will Be Mapped By Humans, Not Robots ( The massive amount of content connections within networks like Facebook are on the verge of becoming their own web.More recently, I wrote a second article on The Future of Search (http://www.newfangled.com/search_is_a_work_in_progress), which continued the thought but pushed a bit further into some of the trends that I see advancing the socialization of search - the fractalization idea, the greater efficiency of human referrals, trust, and web-enabled equalization. It will be really interesting to see how this all takes shape, but I'm confident that human trust will be a significant driving force of wherever we end up.-Chris
Steve, I not only agree with you, I've seen this in action. Our clients (nearly all Fortune 500) have all centered the lion's share of their social media efforts around Facebook; some exclusively so. The momentum for Facebook is so strong, it's almost ludicrous to believe that Facebook is just what's currently hot. Facebook will likely surpass a half billion users this year. Can't ignore a number like that.
Dave, sure - so do most of my clients - but this only means: now. not necessarily in the future, but we can think about this later. I totally agree on the point that FB is more than important right now - I just don't believe in Steve's idea that FB is centralizing the web or eating it up. Even with FB connect, what I use a lot in client projects, this does not mean FB is more than the hub - it IS the most influencial hub, but not really driving traffic e.g.Nobody should ignore FB. Everyone should evaluate how to utilize the momentum of FB. But keep in mind that this doesn't mean consolidation but broadening the arenas.
I think this is a great comment and it puts me to think. I agree with many points, but I still have questions, if FB can really help us to manage all this information. It is very important platform to aggregate all social information (web 2.0), but still we need better tools to manage all these things. Maybe FB can do it, or all apps on it. Personally I believe that web 3.0 (semantic) things start to come. It is not a big semantic web over night, but step by step. And one of the first steps is to better manage relevant content and context, not only based on key words.
By the way, one has to believe that the Friendfeed effect is taking hold there. You can feel it in the product.
agree that it is going to be the way of the future, it also makes sense, as I don't have to remember extra login details or click away from what im doing to comment on an article or news story.Facebook understands that by making engagement easier more people will be likely to do so, why can't traditional media....
@chrbutler Josh Bernoff from Forrester recently wrote a post on Groundswell about 'the Splinternet' that might interest you (I expect you've already read it, but here's the link anyway http://blogs.forrester.com/groundswell/2010/01/the-splinternet-means-the-end-of-the-webs-golden-age.html)
I'll try again:http://blogs.forrester.com/groundswell/2010/01/the-splinternet-means-the-end-of-the-webs-golden-age.html
As of today, when I checked in and saw my new homepage on Facebook, and this new more easy-to-use UI, I definitely saw the FriendFeed effect taking hold there. Well that and the way that other social media sites are connecting to Facebook more and more. Here are my concerns though about Facebook becoming this centralized thing...will people be resistant to populating all of their content/ social media spaces to this one place? I ask this because of privacy concerns and issues. For the first time this weekend, I caught CNBC's Inside the Mind of Google http://www.cnbc.com/id/33980309. And there was a point that Eric Schmidt made--the day people stop trusting Google, is the day that Google fails. (In essence, people stop using Google services/products because they don't trust Google with their information.) I'm thinking that Facebook isn't fully there with the trust of its user base yet, given all the hullabaloo around privacy issues and updated privacy settings on the site.When Facebook can earn mass trust and people start to feed it more instead of still feeding everything else, plus Facebook, I'll agree with you 100%.
Have to disagree: FB is not suitable for all modes of interaction, and doesn't foster deep discussions. Case in point: Check out Adobe Photoshop's Facebook page with 400,000 fans. Great wall. Now check out the discussion group. For FB, great interaction -- daily posts. Now check out forums.adobe.com where the real interaction is - dozens of posts each day. Either because of location intention or software affordances, that in-depth discussion doesn't take place on FB.
I love the metaphor of google ruling pull vs Facebook ruling push. In fact, Facebook is already a layer behind the web. It's the web's social screen. I wonder what the third layer may look like.
Facebook is a layer to collect content, streams, and content providers (I mean whoever blog writer, twitter blogger, publisher) select if they want to have their content in Facebook (if technically feasible) and then users select, what part of the content/streams they take to their UI. Maybe the 3rd layer could be more from reader / consumer selection, what they want and the 3rd layer collects it from all possible sources. If I compare this to TV, now we still select channels, but could it be that I just sit and programs are selected to me?
I agree Facebook could Eat The World. Is is the AOL of our time. I see it has two posts on your blog (lifestream) so you think it can. I agree I would say, whereas Twitter did not get advertising right from day one, Facebook did. They were able to monetize, they do on a daily basis and can grow exponentially as they improve the service, they know they are poviding a service. People will ask there Facebook friends where to eat, they will poll rather than Google. They want the interaction.
I hope you are wrong. I have facebook because I can connect with my family, but I don't LIKE it. I don't want to join Farmville or look for Easter eggs. It reminds me of the September that never ended (page AOL) and, while it has some good things, it is far too easy to abuse.
Steve, still think Facebook is the next Google with Google's release of Buzz.google.com? (Yes gg is behind the game, but has many similar components of FB. And once it pulls them all together into a seamless experience like FB, then what?)
@Anthony, absolutely. They have the lead. And social is Google's Achilles heel. We shall see though.
You may be right about facebook being and becoming more of a central hub for social networking. The truth is that I rarely use it directly. Anything that I do post there is via Posterous or Twitter and any feedback I receive comes back to me via Gmail. I have never and will never play a game on facebook, so for me it's nothing more than a relay station.