
F8 Preview: How Facebook Plans to Take Over the Web - jaybol
http://gigaom.com/2010/04/20/facebook-takes-over-the-web/
======
risotto
They're gonna take over the web with a toolbar and checkins? Nope.

Compare to Google's web browser, phone platform (Android and Google Voice),
operating systems, web platform (App Engine), app marketplaces and fiber.

I like Facebook and depend on it. They will happily be a top destination on
the web for a long time to come if they keep doing what they are doing: run a
pleasant, useful and fun website for keeping in touch with people.

But Facebook is a web app, Google is a technology empire. There's no
comparison right now. Twitter and Yelp should be scared, but not Google.

~~~
alastair
google should most definitely be scared. they make something like 90% of their
profit from advertising - advertising based on your search query or the
context of the page you're reading. facebook's ad platform has the potential
to destory them, given they know your so much more about you, your friends,
interests etc.

is it hard for facebook to launch a search engine, with rankings tweaked via
the social graph? not really.

is it hard for google to catch up with fb's graph? yes very, but they're
trying.

~~~
smokinn
The difference is the last mile. Google's ads target someone looking for
something (which is much more likely to result in a sale) whereas facebook's
ads target someone looking to check out his friend's pics from last night's
party or the profile of a girl he met recently.

Vastly different contexts.

Maybe, in the future, facebook will be able to change this, but it's doubtful.
At least not on the facebook.com property. There's a very good reason why
social network CPMs are consistently the lowest in the entire industry.

~~~
dejb
> There's a very good reason why social network CPMs are consistently the
> lowest in the entire industry.

That's the whole point of the article in my view - Facebook is looking for
ways to increase that CPM. If they can do that then they would stand a chance
of 'taking over the web'. Yes they probably would have find a way to 'target
someone looking for something'. I would estimate that the average user of
Facebook is more naive and influence-able in their purchasing than the average
Google user which could be a useful advantage.

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_debug_
Dear everyone, please move to the next freebie online platform and kill
facebook so that their plans to use you fail. Please repeat once every 5
years.

This is good enough to keep our privacy for now.

~~~
JesseAldridge
Keep dreaming. Facebook is here to stay.

I mean, even my _mom_ uses it for god's sake.

~~~
mcdoh
I think that's part of the problem, though. Once your parents, coworkers, and
old acquaintances have littered your friends list it is no longer a fun
experience. To me Facebook just feels like such a chore.

~~~
kalid
Agreed. Facebook has already become a giant contact list for me, I don't feel
like I can "be myself" there b/c of the varied audience (from kid cousins to
random ex-coworkers).

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tokenadult
"To those who view it as the 21st century version of the online ghetto called
AOL"

That's really the question. Is Facebook poised to be the 21st century AOL, or
something as fresh and new (and useful) as Google was when it first appeared?
This will be an interesting set of developments, especially if discerning
users of Facebook can mostly free-ride while doofus users do most of the
monetizing for the company.

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1053r
"Daddy, where were you when privacy died?" "I was on hacker news commenting
through facebook connect."

On the one hand, I don't have to use facebook. On the other hand, I worry
about the immense asymmetry of information that facebook has about me even if
I don't join. If I'm a hole in the social graph (because all my friends use it
regularly to post pictures, etc. of me), it doesn't take much effort for them
to fill in the data on me.

~~~
pak
It would take a hell of a heuristic for facebook to fill in holes in the
social graph. Without some very intelligent fuzzy name matching, facial
recognition, and textual analysis of your friend's profiles and walls (if you
ever are mentioned), not having a profile ID basically means they have nothing
on you that can be extracted in an automated fashion.

A human investigator, however, would be intelligent enough to build a profile
on you from your friends' submitted information, so there still is some cause
for concern. But at least you are safe from datamining.

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codexon
I will be greatly annoyed if Facebook becomes the default login on other
websites.

~~~
bvi
Funnily enough, I don't mind logging in with my Twitter credentials, but
Facebook? That's a no-go.

~~~
pclark
why?

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derwiki
I submitted this 2 hours ago but without the trailing slash; HN considers
those unique URLs?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1280902>

~~~
jaybol
That is strange...sorry for the duplicate submission, you were first on it
indeed :) From the gigaom.com homepage the article link had the trailing slash
and it went through as a unique URL.

~~~
derwiki
No worries, I was just confused :)

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bbsabelli
A facebook toolbar at the bottom of webpages?

Just a quick reminder:
[http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2040/1924189728_668c4bc4e2.jp...](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2040/1924189728_668c4bc4e2.jpg)

~~~
callmeed
Those are all at the top, so this shouldn't be a problem ;)

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mortenjorck
Facebook check-ins mean one thing to me:

The next version of Facebook for iPhone will pop up a "Facebook would like to
use your current location" every time I open it, to which I will select "Don't
Allow" each time, at last encouraging me to stop using the app and thus stop
using Facebook.

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iamdave
I'm still kind of wondering how Facebook continues to thrive, after time and
time again showing the Internet it does not do so well with customer service
(in more direct terms: has a very hard time listening to its users).

I'm sad to admit the only reason I haven't deleted mine a long time ago is
that a good 80% of my friends are completely lost without it, even though they
have working email addresses and phone numbers.

~~~
bho
s lot of people play the games on facebook. did you see the recent article
about 7.4 million people on farmville?

~~~
seiji
I'm pretty sure the number is closer to 80 million. Yes, you can climb back
into your chair now.

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SwellJoe
Here's the thing...I don't trust Facebook to have this much power on my web.
They simply haven't consistently shown themselves to be trustworthy when
protecting their users conflicts with making money. It would only take one
such incident to make me hesitant; and there has been more than one such
incident.

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jsz0
I always wonder if people really paranoid about online privacy apply the same
fears to their offline lives. That could include always using cash to avoid
being tracked by retailers, wearing hats/sunglasses to make yourself harder to
identify, making sure no one is looking at you when you go shopping so they
can't make a judgement over what you might buy, using fake names whenever
possible, wearing gloves to avoid possible finger print traces of your
presence, keeping a safe distance from your friends & family in public to
avoid any possible observers from noticing you are socially connected. I kind
of doubt it. Not sure what to make of that.

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mojuba
Facebook has good chances of taking over the social web for the same reason
Microsoft took over the desktop 15 years ago: they target the non-technical
majority of the population. Techies usually demand more transparency,
flexibility, quality and minimalism, while non-techies, paradoxically,
generally fall for interfaces with lesser degrees of freedom, which makes them
more comfortable with it. Less freedom translates to "ease of use" for non-
techies.

This is why Facebook somewhat intuitively reminds Windows and will most likely
share its faith - not exactly dominance, but pretty close to it.

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james2vegas
So that explains the timing of that xauth announcement from google.

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waterlesscloud
Interesting to see Facebook has reached that stage in every big tech company's
lifecycle where they waste a lot of resources on Things That Obviously Won't
Work.

