Facebook and the Advent of Electricity (all questions and no answers)

The recent announcement by Facebook can be likened to electricity in the late 1800s, and Mark Zuckerberg is Thomas Edison.  Unfortunately, Edison was a loser when it came to electricity.

This announcement seems like a great approach to a logical step in web development.  As a developer, the organization of data into open systems just makes sense.  It is what we do.  We also live in a world where the main browsers can’t even agree on standards (they claim to), and that is really just the tip of a non-standard web.  The internet has evolved from its more simplistic life to one where applications are coded specifically for one browser or another, one phone to the next, and where sites have to make special allowances for the next big thing from Apple.  Open data is the goal, but is it possible when we don’t even have open systems?

Two paragraphs and I’m already off topic. Sorry.  Back to Facebook.

Facebook is passing out “Like” buttons with promises of connections, data, and sharing.  In the end, though, where will the power lie and who will receive the benefits?  For the consumer, will this create a massive preference echo chamber, where we are targeted based on what a developer chooses to harvest from our profiles?  Will this increase our user experience or simply provide a method for developers, marketers, and advertisers to serve up more “accurate” content while decreasing our overall experience?  Perhaps we’ve confused providing useful content TO users with aggregating content ABOUT users. 

One article stated that if I don’t claim my “'Like' ring of Facebook power", it is at my own peril.  The web isn’t about Facebook.  My website isn’t about Facebook.  My service doesn’t seek to replicate it and my users don’t come to me looking for it.  But also, as a developer, I do have a need of what Facebook is offering and perhaps my users (and I) can benefit from it.  Quite a conundrum!

I appreciate that people have had their eyes opened to the power of a truly opened web.  Get excited, but do it for the right reason.

Are we being fooled into another light bulb sales pitch?

While the public implementation of electricity was groundbreaking, the DC delivery that Edison wanted to employ totally missed the mark.  He was a powerhouse and had the means to make it happen.  It was the passion and true vision of Nikola Tesla, however, which actually revolutionized the electrical world.  In admiring one revelation, are we blind to its shortsightedness to a bigger issue?  It is only in recent years that we have started to wean ourselves off the incandescent light bulb and move to a more efficient fluorescent… a moved that could’ve been made 100 years ago.  Thanks Edison.

I submit that the ultimate end-state of the internet is one of open, shared data, and perhaps we are witnessing the infancy of the semantic web.  Basing it upon social networks, a now undeniable pillar of the internet, seems like a natural path to follow.  The current proposition doesn’t truly address the problem of open data, but it may start leading us in the right direction.  The goal should be that I, as a developer, can access all publicly available data as needed.¹  Tying that information to your social graph is just a small, helpful application of a bigger possibility.

As I have mentioned before, the next few months should be very telling.  I still don’t know what to make of it all, and I’m not sure anyone really does.  I will be experimenting with the news tools and hopefully this will be the correct move and it can help usher in the next life of web. (oh, have we hit a billion likes yet?)

Related Information:

1. Along the lines what Sunlight Labs is trying to do in government.
For a techie take, I recommend David Recordon’s Why f8 was good for the open web
And a different perspective from Jeff Jarvis My Facebook Problem – And Yours
Good related links from Ted: Tim Berners-Lee on the next web and Hans Rosling shows the best stats you've ever seen