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Facebook What's up with that?

Another entry in the Zolved series that keeps you up-to-date with all that Internet and technology stuff.


So Facebook is like MySpace but not as annoying. For anyone who has looked at a MySpace profile, that's huge. Facebook has been making a lot of news recently, so we thought we'd bring you up to speed.


Talking Points:
  • Originally, you could only get a Facebook account if you had an ".edu" email address. So that kept it restricted to only college kids.
  • In September 2006, registration was opened up to anyone with a valid email address. That led to two things:
    1. Totally pissing off the college kids.
    2. A mass migration of annoyed MySpace people registering at Facebook.
  • Differs from MySpace by:
    •  not allowing users to overly customize their profiles (removing the "annoying" factor).
What Facebook did recently was to allow anyone to write software applications that can run in Facebook. So individual software writers can add functionality to Facebook profiles. More importantly, companies can create Facebook versions of their own software.  That's a large audience to get your product in front of, and a great way to spread the word about what you're all about.  Dwight Silverman pointed out that is also could be a bad thing:
"As the number of apps grow, the more Facebook can do. But also, the more cluttered individual pages become. Some users' pages now bear a frightening resemblance to those found on -- you guessed it -- MySpace."
I have yet to see a Facebook profile as bad as something on MySpace, but there are already over 1,000 applications available to Facebook users, so it is possible.

Update:
It was announced today that Facebook made their first acquisition, a company called Parakey. Parakey is what is called a Web OS (operating system).  The idea behind Web OSes is that everything you can do on a computer when not connected to the Internet could be done through a web browser when on the Internet. It's not a far-fetched idea, but so far nobody has really nailed it down.

Parakey is the creation of Firefox co-founders Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt. I'm a big fan of Firefox, but I don't know too much about this Web OS stuff. So I turned to Ethan Kaplan's assessment, for no other reason than the fact that he has good taste in music (but he is a major tech guy):
"(with the purchase of Parakey) Facebook is moving out of the web. Pretty simple really. Centralizing your life around your profile, this software will let it extend into any device you have (potentially) to keep your information ecosystem and social ecosystem consistent."
Bottom Line

The monetary bottom line is that everyone agrees that Facebook is worth a lot of money. People were guessing that last year Yahoo! offered $1 billion for Facebook and that Microsoft recently offer $6 billion. It looks likely that they'll instead take it public, especially now that they're buying up other companies.

The other bottom line is this: If you didn't care about MySpace and aren't on the social-networking side of the web, then Facebook is just that all over again.  If you want in on social-networking, then Facebook is a pretty good option and its functionality and future is sure to get interesting.
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Comments
  • Posted by: clay_1199 at 24 Jul 08:12 permalink
    As a person that tried Myspace and Facebook over the past year, evaluatated both for their intended purpose and selected Facebook, I'll tell you that the most annoying feature of Myspace was the spam advertising or from people trying to become a friend just to get a free Ipod or whatever. Facebook (to date) has been able to minimize this intrusive behavior. I hope they'll be able to keep this up. PS, can anyone tell me how to delete one's profile on MySpace?
    • Posted by: RJ45 at 24 Jul 22:10 permalink
      Good point. I forgot about the spam. That's probably due to the fact that I gave up on MySpace after trying for a week last year. It just took way to long to load anything.
    • Posted by: tim1 at 24 Jul 08:16 permalink
      I have been using myspace for quite some time now.Its so irritating to wait 5-6 minutes every time to load a page. Now i switched to face book,its neat,user friendly,clean.Now i m loving it... =)
      • Posted by: ambrosia101_5649 at 24 Jul 11:53 permalink
        The facebook thing is going exactly the same way as myspace did. Initially they restricted their networks to colleges. But simply to get 'more users' the opened up to anyone who care to register.

        At RadioCorridor.com, we're building a social network restricted to companies. We intend not to fall in the myspace/facebook trap:

        - We'll keep the interface clean.
        - The community will not open up to anyone, just because of the numbers.
        • Posted by: RJ45 at 24 Jul 22:12 permalink
          Good luck with your site. What's your plan to differentiate from LinkedIn?
          • Posted by: ambrosia101_5649 at 25 Jul 00:18 permalink
            Hi RJ,
            LinkedIn typically links people across companies, we intend to do just the opposite: create a network within the company. In this way people can talk more freely without the risk of exposing too much of the internals to the outside world.

            In the long run, we're thinking of offering a forum for the employees to give feedback and input on the company strategy, how the company is dealing with hiring, customers, internal promotion and so on. So the 'company internal content' will be much more important than what is possible on linkedin.

            I'd be interested to find out what you and the readers of this forum think about it.
            Mail me at reddy dot ambrosia at radiocorridor.com or visit our blog at radiocorridor.wordpress.com.

            best regards, Reddy