It’s the end of the web as we know it

Aren't these doomsday-posts getting boring?<p>Here's my take:<p>Stop worrying. According to internet physics facebook will gradually diffuse into distributed services.<p>The first mass migration away from the silos is likely going to happen as early as within this decade. As soon as some kid in his basement creates a set of viable protocol specs (read: not diaspora) and as soon as a few relentless hackers smell blood in the water.<p>Once initiated no Zuckerberg or Schmidt has the resources to argue with the second law of thermodynamics. The social graph is destined to gravitate outwards until it's more or less evenly distributed over our always-on devices. Supported by a network of interchangeable service-providers for caching, storage and, of course, "apps".<p>There you have it. But don't let that stop you from writing the next series of sky-is-falling posts. They're part of the process.

There are a few things people/organizations can do that have at least some marginal impact. For example, actually <i>have</i> a website, and attempt to treat it as the canonical source of information. Use Facebook and Twitter, sure, but don't make them your canonical website, the way many bands made their MySpace page their only website. Have the social-network stuff point back to the real website when possible. Post links to news stories or blog posts on your domain, rather than using Facebook Notes as a blog, for example. Have an actual event page that gets mirrored to Facebook events, rather than Facebook events being your only event calendar. Etc.<p>(This is assuming you have the time/resources/interest in doing so. It's often easier not to, but in the long run I do think it's important to control your canonical internet presence, and as much as possible to try to point the presences you don't control towards the one you do.)

I run a major hospital's website and have long stood against putting Facebook 'Like' buttons on the site. This article strengthens my resolve.<p>Lots of patients visit hospital websites to research shame conditions - things nobody but their physician has any right/need to know about. Least of all an organization as brazenly anti-privacy as Facebook.<p>Bumbling around this afternoon I came across a number of hospital websites using Like buttons. I have fired up a Mechanical Turk job to give me a more complete list of US hospitals that do so.<p>Not sure what I'm going to do with the list yet - name and shame or just a broad education campaign? Seems pretty awful to potentially violate patient privacy in the interest of an extra 'share' or two.

Privacy issues aside, the Open Graph is troubling to me because it centralizes innovation in web services to the Facebook network.<p>In the short term is makes sense for a new service like Spotify or turntable.fm to jump on the largest user base in the world, it lowers their barrier to entry. But in the long term it's really harmful to the open web and leads down a depressing path in my opinion. What happens if you DO opt-out of FB, but future services require a FB account?<p>I just killed the Facebook like button on my personal website (not that my site gets a lot of hits). I've signed up for a Diaspora* invite which should be sent to me by "the end of October". I'll set it up for my friends but I don't know who would actually join it, it's not like people need another social networking service. Not sure what else the solution could be though.<p>I wonder if it's possible that these services swing back around and actually offer a charged service without ads. Twitter for instance can offer a free rate that leaves you open to targeted advertising and data collection, but they'll leave you alone if you have a paid account. How much would I have to pay FB per month to make it worthwhile to them?

In my opinion, the article states that without Facebook or Twitter, one can't have a reliable online business. He says:<p><pre><code> Many of the most valuable conversations around technology and many other fields happen on Twitter. If you’re not there you don’t really exist, especially if you’re just getting started in your field. </code></pre> I don't agree. I don't care about Facebook and Twitter. I USE it just a little bit, but people find my online business by other means. I believe good content and useful services always attract their users - even without sites like Facebook and Twitter. They are just tools in my eyes.

One of the comments on the OP's page makes an interesting point:<p>&#62;&#62; This now creates a new level of Service offering for a website; not offering a Facebook Like or Social graphing tool might be seen as a bonus if your trying to promote privacy or respect of peoples data.<p>Do we have any website right now following and acknowledging this ?

Everything old will be new again, just give it a few more years.<p>Once everyone is on a single service that all looks the same, individual websites will become the "cool" thing again.

This is so true.<p><i>&#62;&#62; As with smoking, it’s easier to not start using the social web than to stop. Once you’ve signed up the cost of leaving increases with every “friend” you make, every photo you post, every tweet you send</i>

With the web applications I've been building during the last years, I often had to think hard about my "Facebook policy". If you have any chance of virality, the Facebook platform can at least double it (I guess that the multiplier is much higher, actually).<p>The first time I considered creating an integration with FB, though, I studied how it worked and stopped when I discovered that I could NOT get my users' email [note: I think this isn't true now, I didn't really check though]. That meant that even those users that came directly to my website, but wanted to login using facebook, wouldn't have really become "my" users, that I would have always been dependent on FB.<p>Facebook changes its policies very often, so this particular problem could not be current anymore, but the fact remains that we should be very careful in helping a company which is building the biggest walled garden on the internet by adding too much value to it. Because now the gates are open, but FB can close them whenever they see fit.<p>Right now I'm considering again creating an integration with Facebook for one of my new services, but I'll try as hard as possible to steer the users to my actual website, even if this wouldn't be as frictionless as it could be for them. Bigger issues are at stake.

Couple of comments:<p>1) I'm now recommending to my friends to log out of Facebook and visit it in a private/incognito browsing mode. Probably the same thing needs to be applied to Google sites.<p>2) More importantly, I think it's a bit simplistic to divide the web into "open web" and "Big Web". There are sites that fall in between the wild west of linking and social networking sites. Hacker News is one of these. So is Reddit and StumbleUpon. These sites generate a <i>huge</i> number of page views. In fact, I would guess that they generate more page views for people with only a few thousand followers on social networks.<p>Even if you don't hit the front page of HN, every submission is automatically posted to Twitter (and probably Facebook, I wouldn't know), so the chances of it going viral are just as strong as if you had posted it yourself. These in-between sites allow you to gain the benefits of Big Web without directly participating in it.

<i>Every time you visit a web page that displays the Like button Facebook logs that data in your account. It doesn’t put anything on your wall but it knows where you’ve been.</i><p>Source? I've never heard that before. My understanding of the above is that Facebook will store, on their servers, all of the pages I visit that display a Like button.<p>Edit: The previously linked to article in the essay supports the claim: <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20006532-38.html" rel="nofollow">http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20006532-38.html</a> I was unaware that Facebook was able to retain information even if users didn't actually press the Like button.

worth mentioning, google analytics does this too. and it's probably on more websites than facebook like buttons. also, you don't need to opt in to anything to activate google's version, at least with facebook you have to have an account. with google all you have to do is visit these sites with cookies switched on, something pretty much everyone does without thinking.

It's too complex for most, yes. But just use only facebook in say, Chrome, and every other site in say, Firefox. All the sites you use in firefox won't link through to your facebook account via cookies, bugs/buttons or js.<p>Firefox should/will also get a facebook spying blocker as chrome now has. Microsoft is real friendly with fb, so they'll never implement this.

The concept I agree with is the Web will look much less like the Wild Wild West. The Web of Grandma needs easily integrated pieces - this is Apple and Facebook, not Linux and Usenet.<p>It's not all evil, there will still be behind the curtain users. It's just they won't be as visible. People who aggregate customers charge for the right. Just ask Wal-mart!

I have my own website and always post there first. My system then automatically posts to Facebook, Twitter, and so on. That's the way to do it I think. Of course Facebook doesn't like that and the API never allows you to have the post look quite as good as if you were posting directly, but it's plenty for me.

&#62; and even writing stories just like this one<p>Alright, that is a bit farfetched.

… and I feel fine. ( apologies to Bill Berry et al, and my karma )

<i>You can turn your back on the social networks that matter in your field and be free and independent running your own site on your own domain. But increasingly that freedom is just the freedom to be ignored, the freedom to starve.</i><p>Uh. Anyone else remember the days of curated Internet directory sites? Yahoo was just a huge, organized database of links. Didn't make it to a good standing on Yahoo's directory? Too bad for you. Luckily, search technology matured and (largely) freed us from that.