Facebook in 2010: no longer a walled garden

Cotton Rohrscheib [2009-03-04 10:51 AM]

I agree w/ you in that Facebook will be the most open social network out there by the end of the yar, in a lot of ways they already are. I have been saying for a long time that Facebook is going to change the way that we, as developers, build solutions, and I stick by that. They might not be changing the world (twitter is handling that) but they are changing the web.

I started adding facebook connect to client websites last year, these are websites that had been using open-id for years, and it was immediately accepted by site users, while open-id has remained a novelty to most...

Jim Benson [2009-03-04 11:12 AM]

Interesting.

What will drive this is not business logic, as you've applied here, but the culture at Facebook itself.

It was only a few weeks ago that Facebook announced that it would own everyone's data forever. Then they were slapped hard. Now they are letting the community write the policies (more or less).

If the culture continues in this direction, full openness is inevitable. As we move forward in the spirit of openness, applications and personalized sites will drive the direction of the social web.

My question is: Where does Facebook's value come from? Is it the associations? Is it the interface? Is it the application platform?

Right now, Facebook does get value from being walled. Are they savvy enough to make the transition? Or will internal fear and culture drive them to remain closed?

Christian Tietze [2009-03-04 11:45 AM]

I hoped that social services would eventually open up and serve as a kind of centralized or focal point of my web identity. Currently, myopenid.com serves me my OpenID and I do trust the protocol and the service. Facebook could have been something great for a long time yet but it happened that they got stuck, somehow, in their walled garden. Trust in Facebook isn't that big after all anymore.

I like to refer to http://webdesignfromscratch.com/future-social-web-experience.php. Especially Facebook (or before I'd have said: MySpace) seems to be able to do what Ben Hunt describes in his article. A giant like Google or Microsoft (with their huge infrastructure) would be cool, too, but we don't see them moving in that direction, or do we?

Hopefully Ben's vision will come reality once. And I really hope we could all trust in whatever service makes it -- for it's a really big deal of confidental information and privacy.

Fabricio Zuardi [2009-03-04 12:01 PM]

I agree with your second argument, Facebook will become irrelevant if it maintain it's current course, as it is already becoming…

However, I don't think they will figure that out by themselves, you are being too optimistic about it.

If I were to make a prediction for 2010 I would say that Facebook will be either dead or totally discredited due to sequential bad moves consequence of their proprietary thinking.

Todd [2009-03-04 01:36 PM]

Post ignores 800 pound gorilla in the corner of the room?

Facebook's puppet master, Steve Ballmer, will never ever, EVER allow them to open up!

Zuckerberg ows Ballmer $400,000,000.00

Nate Smith [2009-03-04 01:45 PM]

If your (well founded) predictions come true, this would be really good news for facebook users (ummmm... everyone?). The openness of data is what has really sarked the explosive growth of twitter in the form of twitter web and desktop apps. A fully open facebook, and by extension a truly full facebook api, could really start a whole new wave of applications based on the massive amount of data available through the service.

Chris Ballance [2009-03-04 02:45 PM]

It pleases me to see that Facebook seems to be slowly embracing the social web, and I agree with your definition's excusion of walled gardens. The walled garden concept is exactly why AOL'esque services failed.

Regardless of whether or not Facebook opens its walls significantly, I see it losing relevance as a social portal, but gaining relevance as an innovator in social media.

OpenID is pivotal for social web to to grow, and its support seems to be growing by leaps and bounds.

Nigel Walsh [2009-03-04 04:20 PM]

Looks interesting and I look forward to seeing it - I guess we must not forget that with 175m users and growing, we cant expect them to be as agile as they once were - these things will come, it will just take time. To get it wrong would be very bad...

Lachlan Hardy [2009-03-05 03:51 AM]

Actually, David, in today's world you cannot delete your Facebook account. And they do not delete any of your data.

I've been free of the Facebook for over a year now so I might be tad out of date, but I figure I would have heard if they'd changed that.

I had to email privacy@facebook.com (their only published email address - and indeed, once you get support, you'll realise it's literally their only public email address) and they refused to delete my account until I had removed every scrap of data from it.

I'm sure you've heard the stories before. "Lachlan is no longer in a relationship" (my fiancee loved that). "Lachlan is no longer friends with David." For all 400-something relationships. Deleting applications, interests and personal details pales in comparison.

Tell me they've removed that kind of psychological cost from their system and I'll being to consider that they actually might be changing.

Ian Hendry [2009-03-05 04:56 AM]

I posted a long time ago that the next wave in social networking was likely to be niche sites appealing to specialist interest or specific objectives. It has been slow coming but initiatives like OpenID and Facebook Connect will make them easier to use for those already involved in mainstream social networking. Both initiatives also enable your activities on those remote networks to now be streamed back as status updates.

And this is, I think, what Facebook is preparing for. It may not be the social network of choice as peoples needs develop (like we all outgrew AOL). but it wants to be the entry point, identity owner and aggregator. With what we see happening I think they are already there.

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz

Neal J [2009-03-05 08:59 AM]

David - As you explained MySpace has done a great job in bringing down the walled garden. Why do you think the strategy hasnt worked for them in terms of attracting more users, engagement, etc?

I think FB has played their cards correctly. Build a walled garden and slowly start opening up when you have more than sealed the SN space.

susan julia [2009-03-05 09:36 AM]

But doesn't this carry the same inherent flaw as globalization...one site gets compromised and due to their interconnectivity they ALL get compromised...

Globalization not only exploited weaker economies, it also resulted in their sharing in the criminal high risk behavior of Wall Street banksters that has had such catastrophic consequences for all involved,especially those that were forced to buy into it--Iceland comes to mind. By contrast, Hugo Chavez refused to play the globalization game and has managed to avoid the total economic collapse that is taking place around the world.

I don't know, as soon as I read this the disaster of globalization came to mind...like the Rache says, "can anyone talk be down on this?"

Louis [2009-03-08 05:03 PM]

Could someone please enlighten me as to;

1. Why FB going open is actually in the interest of general everyday users of FB and not just other businesses or technologists who want a piece of the data pie that FB has built. Do users really care about(want) data portability etc or would it in fact not be a cause of worry for them?
2. Why being open would be such a good business move for Facebook or any business for that matter; or more to the point why going open wouldn't in fact reduce its competitive advantage.
3. How real the similarities really are between FB's walled garden and AOL's.
4. Why FB can't succeed with a 'walled garden' when Apple has so far done so.

I guess I just don't buy into this "open up or die" notion (yet) but I'm willing to be convinced otherwise.

Laurent [2009-04-13 01:57 PM]

hi there,

Don't you think that Facebook will be the most open "highway" on the social web.

What I mean is that once you are on FB, you can have access to any other locations, if it remains on FB highway.

FB don't control your destination but the way you go there.

What do you think?

dave [2009-04-21 02:48 AM]

this is a beut

Ian Hendry [2009-08-26 01:18 AM]

This has proved an interesting thread to revisit after Facebook's acquisition of FriendFeed. It may only have been 5 months ago that this thread was started, but you could have predicted that purchase on the back of it!

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz

majid [2010-01-12 08:19 AM]

you may use html tags for style

Tim [2010-02-07 07:34 PM]

Well, it's almost a year from the date of this post and Facebook is still a closed gate compared to Myspace.