

There's less to Facebook and other social networks than meets the eye - mdemare
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9990635
The fifth paragraph made me think. What if Google, Yahoo or Microsoft started a social network based on the addresses in their webmail apps? It would instantly be bigger than Facebook. 
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johnrob
What would be really interesting is if the social networks start using
eachother's APIs to import and track friends from rivals. You could add the
myspace app to your facebook account, and then you could track your facebook
friends while using myspace (vice versa ad infinitum). After the carnage,
there would be a single portable social graph. And the sites themselves would
be commodities.

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Xichekolas
Well with what you describe, the graph would become the commodity, the sites
themselves would remain unique and competitive, but as interfaces to the
graph.

Overall I think your idea sounds like a win for all. Users could have a single
presence at the site of their choice, with friends from other sites, new
entrants would have a lower barrier of entry, and existing sites are less
likely to lose users to the network effect. Of course, the big players would
probably have more competition from niche players too, so I guess that would
be the downside for Myspace and Facebook.

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ereldon
The most interesting, underutilized and least known aspect of Facebook's
platform, imho, is the fact you can export Facebook data to other sites and
other communication systems (albeit in a limited way). O'Reilly's been
blogging about this lately.

[http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/10/mark_zuckerberg_fa...](http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/10/mark_zuckerberg_facebook_backstage.html)

"I do think that there are two views of the social graph, though, and how it
gets deployed: there's a platform view in which it can be exploited to build
smarter applications on Facebook; there's a deeper view in which the Facebook-
discovered social graph can be accessed by other applications elsewhere on the
net. Facebook's granular control of what information you reveal and to whom is
thus a key part of the platform -- but the question is how far Facebook will
go in letting other sites use this information. If Mark's answer is the first,
Facebook is ultimately a closed platform; if the latter, it becomes a true
open platform and value enabler."

Here's a relevant post to that: [http://gigaom.com/2007/10/18/big-internet-is-
web-20s-os-so-w...](http://gigaom.com/2007/10/18/big-internet-is-web-20s-os-
so-who-owns-the-apps/)

The Economist article also confuses news feeds (your friends actions, on your
FB homepage) and mini-feeds (your own actions, on your profile page). Makes
you wonder if the author has actually ever been on to Facebook. Perhaps
there's less to The Economist's analysis of Facebook than meets the eye?

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mdemare
The fifth paragraph made me think. What if Google, Yahoo or Microsoft started
a social network based on the addresses in their webmail apps? It would
instantly be bigger than Facebook.

~~~
aston
Obviously size isn't the only thing that matters. That graph in the middle of
the article is a pretty sick demonstration that MySpace is _dominating_ this
game. And yet, nobody's trying to buy it off of News Corp. Valleywag's claimed
that Rupert Murdoch is a lot more excited about Facebook than his own
purchase. As is the rest of Silicon Valley, hence the valuations that have
nothing to do with the user numbers. Or the yearly revenue...

The thing that is most similar between (post-IPO) Google and Facebook is the
immense, almost unbelievably universal goodwill held about the company by the
public. Goodwill's not actually worth much money in and of itself, but if the
entire world wants Facebook to make money, it eventually will. Let's hope that
happens before the users leave.

~~~
veritas
So if it isn't the users and it isn't the revenue, then Facebook's insane
valuations are the product of... hype?

Valuations aside, you're right in saying what really matters is monetization
and this is where Google shines. I don't care how much information Facebook
has about me, I don't go onto Facebook looking to buy things. I go there to
see what's going on in my friends' lives. As the article states, ads on
Facebook are an annoyance.

Google's in the right market for targeted ads because when we're looking to
buy something, we're more open to advertisements and clicking on them. On
Facebook, I'd guess that very few, if any, are looking to buy something (and
hence Facebook's abysmal click-through rate).

Also, I can't see users leaving Facebook (eventually the time sunk into
building connections just entrenches you into the network), but I hope it
figures out something quickly, or these valuations might drop.

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rwebb
22% of Canada uses Facebook.

The next 5:

Norway: 18.68%

UK: 10.58%

Sweden: 9.09%

Australia: 6.64%

United States: 6.57%

Those numbers are silly.

<http://tinyurl.com/22jnu5>

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mynameishere
How could there be less to it? It's a CRUD app.

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wschroter
... queue bandwagon backlash

~~~
alaskamiller
Facebooker is the new AOLer.

