Facebook Will Centralize the Social Web

Michael 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.

See the full gallery on posterous

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.

Comments

[Scott]

while i agree to an extent Facebook needs to get its usability tactics in order. They keep making these home page changes and overall I see users getting frustrated, angry, and wondering why it had to change. Usability is about making it easier for all, not for some, and Facebook could use some help in this arena.

[Ri]

For me, Facebook is getting boring and cold. I used to like going to my friends' profiles and exchange a few lines now and then. Nowadays, nobody listen to anybody anymore. Everybody is busy shouting things to their feeds and most of us hardly read anything anymore. Ironically, we don't know what are friends are up to. Besides, it is starting to look like a market, just businesses and businesses as profile pictures.

[Joe]

Page views and users are one thing. Monetization is another. If you look at the value of Facebook ads in terms of CPM, you'll see that their traffic simply does not command a premium. It's garbage. That's probably why I always see non-relevant "count the triangles" ads in Facebook.In other words, if Facebook truly was this powerhouse ready to compete with Google, you'd think its traffic would be equally valuable. But it's not even close. That means its yield--the ability to convert traffic to cash--is really low. In fact, most of the value in FB such as fan pages and product referrals are not even directly monetized.