
Is Facebook the new Internet and how soon before Microsoft tries to buy it? - Anon84
http://blogmaverick.com/2010/04/22/is-facebook-the-new-internet-and-how-soon-before-microsoft-tries-to-buy-it/
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timdellinger
I suppose Mark Cuban thinks Facebook is going to turn into a 1991 AOL: a one-
stop shop for all things internet, a lens through which you experience
everything. This is the same Mark Cuban who said that Twitter will replace
Google for searching... I think he's a little out of touch with how people use
these services.

Facebook is attempting to expand in scope because they're ambitious, but at
the end of the day, they're just a social networking site. As a matter of
fact, they're really just a template for people who don't want to go to the
trouble of designing their own webpage. Which is a great service, but that's
all it is. Oh, and it's easy to link to other people's web pages.

Facebook and social networking are exciting today the same way EBay was in
2000: the medium is the message. You went to EBay because it was novel and
fun. Soon enough, Facebook will have reached it's potential the way EBay has.

~~~
roc
> _I suppose Mark Cuban thinks Facebook is going to turn into a 1991 AOL: a
> one-stop shop for all things internet, a lens through which you experience
> everything._

For everyone I know that actually uses Facebook [1], this is essentially true.
FB users don't do things on the net. They do things on FB. Excursions to
sites/services outside of Facebook are the exception.

I've been calling it "AOL all-over-again" for a few years now. (I'm behind the
curve, I'm sure; I don't do social networks).

[1] Subtracting out those who use it for professional reasons.

~~~
SanjayU
Gotta agree on this one.

------
coreyrecvlohe
Though I'm not ready to call facebook a fad, or undercut it's significance, I
will go out on a limb here and say the way the website works was pretty novel
for a while, but it's lacking in innovation.

The ability to check your friends status? Ok, pretty cool. Connect with old HS
and college friends? Ok, that's sort of cool too. But more and more I find
myself withdrawing from actually participating in the micro of the site, and
using it more as a macro tool for my own identity. I don't have a facebook now
because I actually use it, or gain much from it, rather I simply have it
because, well, everyone else does. And it comes up on Google when people
search my name.

In other words it's a part of my general online identity, along with my
personal website, twitter, posterous, etc. I'm not saying I use these tools
like a lot of others might, but I'm also trying to drive home the point that
it's just another of many identity tools that I have at my disposal.

Now I'm not sure about Facebook taking over my complete identity, as in being
my de facto online presence, because I have huge issues with the way facebook
is going about retaining its control over the data generated from their users.

I think if facebook wants to stay relevant they'll have to keep entering new
domains on the web, and certainly they have plans for location-based services,
and other stuff down the road.

For the time being now though, the entertainment of watching status updates on
my phone, or browsing peoples wall streams just doesn't seem economic to me in
terms of building something people would use on the order of a Google search
engine. Sure some people may be spending a lot of time on there, but to me it
looks more like an illusory fixation with comparing oneself to others than
something that I can get real use out of.

(With my Mac I run a business and organize my entire personal and professional
life, with Google all of the worlds information is literally at my finger
tips, with Facebook I just found out that Stacey's new dog took a leak on the
carpet and that Steve thinks avatar was a great movie; there's a big
difference there.)

~~~
tokenadult
As I have related in another HN thread, I actually enjoy the friend-mash-up
aspect of Facebook. I am more than twice as old as the median HN participation
age (I'm pretty sure), and I have lived in more than one country, so I have
friends from various eras of my life and various places. Now on Facebook I
post a lot of links (some of which I learn about here on HN, with a hat tip in
gratitude) and friends comment about those links, with all sorts of
interesting discussions with diverse viewpoints. Friends of mine who have
never, ever met one another are good virtual friends as they meet up in my
discussion threads. There are even FB friends of my FB friends who have asked
me to become directly FB-friended by me (a request I have honored) so that
they can get in on all the link postings. This has been a fun and unexpected
aspect of FB for me. I block ads on Facebook and all other websites, and I use
Facebook Purity to block other FB annoyances. I never, ever play FB games or
do anything on FB that directly costs me money. I like the way I can free-ride
on FB and enjoy a service monetized by people who have less intellectual ways
of having fun.

------
ct4ul4u
I don't think Facebook is buyable right now. Consider how wide the PDF of its
future values is. There is a chance that Facebook will be bigger than Google.
I'm sure many of you have reasons why it won't happen, but it is plausible.
It's certainly what Facebook management is shooting for.

Alternatively, Facebook could be out of fashion in 2 years. Don't forget that
we work in a fashion industry. It wouldn't even be worth its last post-money
valuation.

So the expected value of Facebook lies somewhere in between and that expected
value is radically short of management's dreams. They don't need cash and they
seem to be executing well. This is not a recipe for strategic acquisition.

I think Facebook will remain private and independent for as long as it can. If
they are on a path to success and need more cash, they'll IPO (remember
those?). If they keep their user base, but can't scale their monetization,
they'll be bought by somebody who can (a search engine). The worst case isn't
pretty because they don't have the backstop that has been supporting MySpace
through its troubles (music).

~~~
robryan
No they have a better one (connect).

------
eplanit
When was the last time you surfed the net? 5 seconds ago.

Can you remember when you just clicked around looking to discover new sites or
a site to occupy your time? Yes, I remember this morning.

Now ask yourself when was the last time you sat on your couch or laid in bed
clicking the remote looking for something to watch on TV? I remember last
evening quite well.

Finally, how long do you regularly spend on Facebook ? Zero, nada, nuttin'.

How much time do you spend checking out your Wall, your friends’ Wall and
hopping from profile to profile checking people out? First, I thought the
previous question was "finally"...Still, Zero, nada, nuttin'

And, I'm not alone, not by a longshot.

I've heard non-tech news commentators make the mistake that Facebook is
somehow a distinct technology than the Internet on which it lives. I think the
author of the article is similarly confused. Does he/she see cars as the new
freeways?

Facebook loves to try and define itself as "a platform". I guess to see one's
self that way, one must deny or ignore the actual platform on which one
depends. For the gullible in its ranks, that characterization seems to work
well.

------
Carcarius
So, will Facebook destroy the Internet or simply change it's identity? Change
it's identity, haha, get it ... ahem... (:P

Personally, I don't like where this is heading. I deactivated my account
(can't delete it outright for some reason!) so I should no longer have a
presence on facebook. However, this is not the case since I can log back in
and my account is instantly re-activated. Whatever I shared on that site
previously will always be there.

The privacy concerns are a serious problem and I think people need to
critically look at this and decide if this is what they want their Internet
experience to be going forward.

~~~
tokenadult
_I deactivated my account (can't delete it outright for some reason!)_

I haven't tried this myself, but here

<http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=16929680703>

is supposedly advice on how to permanently delete a Facebook account. Maybe
some HN participant will do the experiment and report back to us how it goes.

I do know (from my son trying the experiment) that Facebook account
deactivation is very rapidly reversible.

------
ajju
"Google has minimal if any connection to their users."

I think, at the very least, almost every Gmail and Android user would
disagree. Not to mention users of search, docs, voice etc. etc.

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sunchild
"If you are like most, you kill more time hopping around on Facebook than you
do exploring the Net."

Uhhh...not even remotely applicable to me, unless by "the Net" he is referring
to a Sandra Bullock movie.

~~~
timcederman
The article did say "like most", not "like all".

~~~
sunchild
I think it's safe to say more people click "the Net" than Facebook all day.

------
loup-vaillant
> Facebook knows more than all of us like to admit about its users. They have
> our personal information […]

People will eventually realize what a dystopia this is. So my guess is that
Facebook (and similar services) will become obsolete soon (within a decade or
two). Just sell easy to use personal web servers[1] that you just plug into
the wall, and they are toast ($99 is much cheaper than my privacy).

[1] By "easy", I mean esier than Facebook itself. By "personal", I mean at
home (virtual private hosting is _not_ personal).

~~~
JeremyBanks
> _$99 is much cheaper than my privacy_

To you and many of us certainly, but do you really think that's true of the
average user? Especially given the tradeoffs (most residential internet
connections would be terribly slow and unreliable for such a purpose) it seems
very unlikely that the average person, who has only the vaguest understanding
of technology and probably hasn't given much thought to their privacy, would
be enthusiastic enough about this idea for it to take off.

~~~
loup-vaillant
Fixing the asymmetry of our internet connections will require political
effort. But we don't need the reliability. We already know how to make
suitable backups, like fall-back MX.

"Average user" mostly means "clueless user". This is unacceptable. Everyone
should know a minimum, like the difference between a web browser and a search
engine. When they do, they will easily see the privacy problems.

I agree $99 is too much for most people. But this is only the current price of
a Sheeva plug. I think we can eventually lower it down to $30, which would be
more like it.

We have both the hardware and the software. Packaging the whole only takes a
dedicated GNU/Linux distribution (or even just a meta-package). So, without
the political and teaching issues, Facebook and Gmail could be made obsolete
within the year. With them, we'll need a decade. But, to quote Eben Moglen:
"It's not that it can't be done".

------
Perceval
Microsoft already bought a chunk of Facebook—$240 million worth back in 2007.
That purchase gave Facebook an implied valuation of $15 billion.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/25/technology/24cnd-
facebook....](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/25/technology/24cnd-
facebook.html)

