Category Archives: facebook

Google v Microsoft over Facebook

Posted on by
Reply

Henry Blodget over at Silicon Alley Insider has a thoughtful post today predicting that Google will beat out Microsoft in the Facebook sweepstakes, and that the real winner here is Facebook founder Zuckerberg who will walk away from any deal with a jaw dropping, market driven valuation of Facebook.     Blodget notes that even if Microsoft spends enough to win the Facebook bidding war Google wins again because Facebook will simply milk Microsoft’s cash cow leaving them with little in the way of a superior online MS environment.

I think this last point is particularly relevant, and poses one of the key threats to Microsoft’s long term viability.    Unlike Google and even Yahoo, new companies don’t appear to see a Microsoft aquisition as much more than a big payday.   It’s not clear to me that Google does any more for the companies it aquires than Microsoft does, but I do think the perception is that Google will inject innovation and enthusiasm where Microsoft will just absorb you into their failing online collective.    I don’t think these assumptions are, on balance, valid, but I think they are part of the equation when new companies and their generally young, inexperienced founders are courted by the big players.

Scoble : More friends than he can click a mouse at

Posted on by
2

Robert’s got neat ideas about online “friends”, pointing out that the best definition for online friend is NOT the same as for offline “let’s have dinner” friends in real life.   But he’s complaining that Facebook is poorly engineered because it limits people to 5000 friends.   Over at Scoble’s blog several are correctly pointing out that he’s such an exception to normal use it’s not fair to expect Facebook to change for the few huge social networkers like Robert.

Uh-oh….I hope he doesn’t bump ME off his friends list now…

Dave Winer, meanwhile, is proclaiming that “Facebook Sucks”, noting that their image, video sharing, and some other features are inferior to the alternatives.   It’s an excellent point though Facebook may be opening up enough to allow integration with pretty much *all* other stuff, and if they do they deserve the praise now heaped upon them in almost nauseating fashion.   Thanks Dave for the reality check.    I wonder if anybody will heed it.

Facebook is not worth $100,000,000,000.00 ?! What is this, the 1980s?

Posted on by
1

Jason Calcanis has an excellent post noting that Facebook madness has become so absurd people are now seriously suggesting that a company with 100 million in revenues could be worth 100 billion.   

Ha – only a year ago knowlegeable people were scoffing at the notion that Facebook  is even worth a billion dollars.   Although Facebook has grown a lot in this past year and has distinguished itself as a brilliant Web 2.0 juggernaut powerhouse in social media, the hype is almost nauseating.  

Unless, of course, you own a piece of the action….

Bubble investors better pack a a golden parachute, because it seems with all these low revenue sky-high valued companies it could all get very ugly very fast. 

Facebook will rule the world in 33 days! Ummm … not.

Posted on by
4

Yes, of course Facebook is a great implementation of Social Networking which is undoubtedly the paradigm that will dominate the internet world for at least a few years.  However Facebook is hardly a *new* idea  and it’s hardly immune to other social networking forces that are in the mix now and will be popping up as time moves on.

AllFacebook is reporting that soon Facebook could kill off LinkedIn with new ways to segregate and work with your contact list, and I think he’s got a good point.   Ideally it seems like would be nice to have ONE intersection point that can be adjusted and manipulated according to our network, community, or audience.   But it’s not clear people will want that to be a commercial enterprise – in fact OpenID in some form seems more likely to take on that role. 

Despite all the hype surrounding a 10 billion valuation for Facebook and rumors of their takeover of the world I’m skeptical they’ll be as dominant as many seem to think after a few years of hassling with the real world of real people – potentially very fickle facebookers. 

Facebook is seeking the mantle of the one stop social networking shop, and as of the latest buzz they seem in a good position to take over from Myspace as the world’s top social network.   However Facebook has a very long way to go in terms of subscribers even though it does seem that the earlier enthusiasm folks showed for Myspace is  giving way to Facebook.    But Facebook is not as “fun” as Myspace so I’d guess we’ll see a demographic division as kids and new users gravitate to the more “fun” sites like MySpace or the new Yahoo Mash and more sophisticated users move in the direction of Facebook.   

TechCrunch on Facebook’s changes

Yahoo Mash – all play and no work?

Posted on by
3

Social networks are the key to understanding the “new” online world so I’m paying a lot of attention to Yahoo’s entry into this space called Mash.    Myspace, with close to 100,000,000 profiles remains by far the king of this heap though Facebook is catching up fast.  Yahoo failed to aquire Facebook after offering – according to most reports – about a billion dollars for what is arguably the best programmed and highest potential social networking environment.

With Mash, several of the beta testing folks including me are asking the question Li Evans correctly is asking over at Yahoo Mash:

… do we really need another Social Network?

I think the answer is basically “yes”, because we need to improve social networking so that you don’t have to sign up separately and build profiles and hassle with friends for every Mash, Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace that comes along.

We need social networking that breaks down the things that separate people from pure online interactions on their own terms, at their own time, and with the information they want to provide to others.   Facebook and Mash admirably are starting to do this with open architectures and developer programs and we are already seeing some great stuff come out of the Facebook environment.    Mash, correctly, is also working to keep development easy and open though they seem to be looking to compete with Myspace more than Facebook.    This may be a good idea from a profitability perspective but it’s disapointing to those of us who want some fun but mostly work related interactions with folks.

Yahoo Mash Blog

OK to email me if you need an invite to Mash beta   jhunkins @ gmail.com

Social Networking, Niches, and Facebook

Posted on by
7

This WSJ piece by Jessica Vascellaro is talking about a clear trend in social networking – noting that we’ve passed the “teen early adoption” phase and entered the professional phase where pretty much everybody will eventually participate in social networking of one form or another.

To filter the noise this social networking will increasingly take the form of highly targeted groups in thousands of interest niches. In fact this may transform socializing from the current scene to a world where most of your friendships are begun online and then extended in the real world.

Facebook’s future is tied up in how this shakes out.    If they succeed and become “the” general social network where you can branch out into specific niches even Google’s current level of success may pale in comparison.  However, unlike Robert Scoble, I’m not enamored enough with Facebook to think this will happen and these social aps will eclipse Google.   Rather I think the “killer application” has yet to be fully structured but will take the form of a robust, transportable, avatar laden, secure personal ID that you can modify easiy and then use to navigate the increasingly socialized internet.     As you visit websites this identity, all aspects of which remain under your own control, will allow other users to interact with you and branch off to your pictures, blog, or other items you choose.    Ultimately we’ll be able to interact online *far more effectively* than offline thanks to the reservoir of information (pictures, blogs, notes, comments, emails, video) many of us now pour online regularly.

One gets a glimpse of this by some of the early efforts like OpenID, bbAuth or Microsoft unified logins, or noting how Facebook cleverly allows the user to import blog posts to their facebook account.  Thus somebody looking at my Facebook profile also is “linked” to my blog posts without much effort.   Unfortunately, however, I have perhaps 100x the number of “active” real world contacts than I have “friends” in Facebook.    This may change, but I’m guessing that many people will never want to maintain much of an online identity, but almost everybody *would* want an application that would help them share and interact with others as they surf.

OpenID is the most promising approach theoretically, but it’s not taking off because there’s no big money to be made which I think has kept away the robust innovations needed for online identity solutions to really take off.

Scoble: Facebook, Techmeme, Mahalo (!) will depose Google

Posted on by
11

Scoble’s provocatively suggesting that Google should fear Facebook, Techmeme, and Mahalo.   I think his key assumption is that these social media environments are resistant to spammy SEO tricks and therefore will do a better job of delivering relevancy over time than Google which will continue to be weighed down by junky content and spamming.

But … I think he’s wrong.   Google could be deposed by a better search tool, but I don’t think that will come from any of these three.    Techmeme is great and I think will gradually scale into a powerful blog tool, Facebook is already on it’s way to co-dominance (with myspace) as the social network of choice for many.    I’m skeptical Mahalo will gain much traction.   I have not been following it all that closely but Mahalo’s “top of mind” prominence seems to be more from Jason’s amazingly aggressive promotional efforts than from a natural rise in the ranks.    But depose Google?   Nope, not gonna happen from these players.

Fred’s not really bankrupt. In fact he’s right on.

Posted on by
3

I’m beginning to think the VC folks are some of the clearest thinkers out there and Fred’s latest post shows some of that practical no-nonsense thinking about two topics I’m very interested in: Blog comments and Facebook.

Fred correctly suggests to Jason Calcanis that turning off his comment section is premature. Sure Jason is busy working on lots of projects and sure he’s sick and tired of pruning stupid comments from idiots but … hey! What about MY comments dude? “Comments off” misses much of the point of blogging, which is not just to talk but to *listen* and get the conversation going.

I’m not an “A list blogger” like Jason but for me the most rewarding posts have had a lot of comments and discussion surrounding them. It’s especially neat when you become an observer rather than a participant as often happened to me when I was blogging the Kim family search in December. Sure I had trolls and a lot of administrative challenges but this is what the new big conversation is all about.

I really enjoyed the great insights over at Marc Andreesen’s blog, but when he turned off the comments I felt personally insulted. Hey, I’d left some good ones there. In fact I don’t read Marc much now even though he’s got great stuff to say. Irrational of me? I don’t think so. Blogging is one-sided enough when you can post things – even the best of comments are relegated to “second class” status on the blog.

The least a blogger can do is give others the time of day. Without comments a blog is just a ranting rag. There are lots of good rants out there but if I cannot participate in your conversation with other interested and interesting folks I don’t want to hang around anyway.

Fred’s also right about Facebook. Here is the comment I left over there because I could:

Excellent post Fred. I’d suggest that it is now up to Facebook to rise to this occasion of their great prominence and keep making it easier for other sites and aps to integrate with Facebook, and perhaps as importantly make money from doing this.

If Facebook succeeds and we can all start using Facebook as our Social networking tool without sacrificing *any functionality* on other sites then they deserve the huge rewards this would bring them

Hey, I just read Jason Calcanis ‘ reply to Fred, which is very thoughtful and I have to say does a good job of defending himself against the elitist tag I’m painting Jason with above for not allowing comments. Frankly, I love his idea where *everybody* gets a blog and then we have a bunch of pinging going on rather than commenting. This would help with the blog revolution because we’d all be reading a lot of new blogs, rather than just comments, in the course of following A list discussions.

OMG! are you my REAL friend or my Facebook Fair Weather Friend or?

Posted on by
4

As Facebook continues to rock the digital personality and social networking landscape I’m starting to build up my Facebook friends list and planning to develop some travel based communities using Facebook at the social networking platform.

However I’m somewhat frustrated with what appear to be dramatically different definitions of the word “friend”. Facebook emails to “add friends” make it seem like you should have a real “relationship” with the person before you add them even though this approach seems to be breaking down quickly as Facebook use, abuse, and social networking explodes.

Robert Scoble to the rescue with a great definition of “friend” over at his blog – here was our exchange over there:

  1. Robert what’s the appropriate way to define “friend”. I have been confused about adding people to facebook thinking Facebook seems to want me to really “know them” to add them though I already have some folks on there I have not met. I’d say the more the merrier, but that will get out of hand quickly.

    What is your rule for adding friends?
    Comment by JoeDuck — July 25, 2007 @ 10:22 am

  2. Joe: in social networks a “friend” is someone you want in your network. No more, no less.

    If you try to limit it to “real friends” you’ll be missing a lot of the power of these things.

    I wish they’d stop calling these things “friends,” by the way. Twitter has done just that. People in Twitter are “followers” for people who watch you and “following” for people you are watching. Much better name for these things.

Thanks Robert – excellent!

I think Robert’s definition has several advantages, most notably it encourages people to have *more* people who they call friend.  I see this as practical, fun, and a small step towards the elusive goal of more global friendship.

Hey – did you just read this?   We’re friends so feel free to send me an add request to Facebook.    Do you blog travel or your local region?    PLEASE help build a network of regional blogging travel enthusiasts to rule the travel world!

Dave Winer’s Final Signup?

Posted on by

Dave Winer is both right on and I fear way too optimistic when, in his discussion of Facebook’s value, he says:

I’m tired of building networks of friends, over and over.
Next time I do it, it’ll be for keeps.

Dave I only wish this were true, but I think you’ll need to be pretty stubborn *or* very socially innovative (hey, you -are- innovative!  Do it!)  to fix the problem of the proliferation of way too many social networks with way too few standards to simplify the whole mess.     But I’m with you if you want to start insisting on some standards – basically some sort of informal understanding among social network users that we won’t sign up for any more social networks until there is a way to port that info safely, easily, seamlessly to other social networks with     I don’t understand why this standard has been so elusive but I think it’s simply that markets have been driving things and there has, until very recently, been too little or negative incentive to make this happen.    As Dave notes Facebook’s open approaches may make them the ultimate social application, leading me to wonder if I was too pessimistic to suggest Facebook’s not worth what many say they should fetch in a buyout.