This is one more step toward the inevitable "major event" occuring in the mid 2010's regarding online privacy.<p>Sooner or later, we're going to trend backwards away from all this. Just like it's hip to be environmentally conscious now, it will be hip to be privacy conscious when the generation growing up giving away all their personal information grows to realize this ultimately can lead to an unhealthy world. This sense of enlightenment, that our natural impulses in the short term can have undesired consequences in the long, is the foundation of movements that define generations. Usually the thing that kicks it all off, though, is a major event that brings these long term consequences to the surface. I certainly hope for this one, it doesn't cost any lives.
I just don't get quotes like (I see in the sidebar) "we are making a web where the default is social".<p>No shit Sherlock. The web has always been social and about sharing information. There's the <a> tag, one might say linking to your friends page is encouraged, and the "default" is no authentication. Meanwhile I, apparently, can't even read the facebook developer docs without signing up. Yeah, real social.
I don't really get Facebook. What is it? I left it alone for a few years, when it was basically a profile and a list of friends. Now when I log in, I don't know what to do. I don't know any of the people who are trying to friend me, and I don't see any way to <i>do</i> anything.<p>Contrast this with Google, where I can find information, get maps, check my calendar, listen to my voicemail, and chat with my friends.<p>I am not sure which one will "win", but I know which one is actually useful for me right now.
Compare the headline with the author's eventual written statement:<p><i>"In my opinion, Facebook still has a ways to go towards improving its actual site if it’s really going to be the long-term center of the web."</i><p>Sign me up for some techcrunch bannagee please.
I can live without facebook (in fact, I have never used it.) I could never live without the Google, and I can never envision a time when this will not be true.<p>What am I missing here?
My thought is that sensationalist headlines are nothing new.<p>More seriously, I know enough people who disdain/distrust Facebook that this seems ridiculous to me. Then again, maybe I know the wrong people.
Its the relationship stupid.<p>Everybody is a friend, no colleagues, much less family, or people you admire. eliminating privacy and reducing relationships to simplistic formulas to be sold to marketers.<p>Fact is, all my relationships are complicated, not just one. including my relationship with facebook, one i'm not particularly attached to either.
This is all very neat. But I'm not going to make my site's functionality dependent on Facebook any more than I'll make it dependent on Yahoo, Microsoft, or Google. There needs to be a way to abstract all this stuff so that if Facebook goes belly up tomorrow, I can still have the social features on my site. I'm pretty sure facebook doesn't want developers thinking about that, though.
<i>In my opinion, Facebook still has a ways to go towards improving its actual site if it’s really going to be the long-term center of the web. (As in, the place you go to rather than Google.com.)</i><p>So they are saying that Facebook wants to become like Digg and Reddit? I just don't see that happening. Maybe if you're a power user who collects friends and has hundreds of people posting stuff you can do that, but it takes a large community to find all those interesting links. And the larger your community becomes the less personal it is and the more it becomes saturated with irrelevant stuff. So it seems that Facebook can be either a great place to find interesting stuff online or a personal place for you and your friends, but not both.
Well, Facebook just released a feature it thought will make life better for it's users, and it probably will. Nowhere did Facebook mention that one can't create something similar with their own social network.<p>Facebook is trying to do something really innovative here. That's solid entrepreneurship, which is why it's receiving such violent opposition, as usual. They are trying to jump to the next curve, and that's great. If other networks jump in, this could change the very basics of how we experience web, with or without Facebook. I think Facebook is just first company to start this, just like some company started 'e-mail'; that company didn't own the world's communication.<p>What I really want to see here is, how much are people willing to use their 'real' identities outside of facebook window. Because most of legit users on Facebook use their real names (I think), and there must be a reason that whenever somebody uses an id to comment on websites, it looks like 'pinkgur92twilight_meow'.
This is just creepy. Facebook is a profit motivated company and I don't understand why people keep feeding it data and not just any data but relevant, extremely profitable data for free! Google knows a bunch of stuff too but for some reason this seems way more creepy.
I would love to see more data behind their users, as in how many of their nearly 500 million users have even used the service? Added to their profiles? Created a friends list? Verified their e-mail address?<p>I have friends who have, combined, created hundreds of dummy facebook accounts that they do not use because while they do not have dedicated facebook accounts, they often want to see someone's profile or friend's list. So they hit "Sign Up", put in a fake e-mail address, fake first name, fake last name and register. Facebook makes this quite easy because they don't even require, last I checked, that you verify your e-mail address before you start using the site features.
Your internet identity in owned by Facebook, I don't like that, what if I wanted to delete my account, I'd lose my identity, my friend connections and all the stuff gathers on my FB profile, I don't think this should be the case and I don't think it's sustainable.