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Jason Kottke on Facebook as the new AOL

June 29th, 2007 by Gen Kanai

Even though I did recently join Facebook, I’m very much of the same opinion as Jason Kottke regarding Facebook vs. the Internet.

As it happens, we already have a platform on which anyone can communicate and collaborate with anyone else, individuals and companies can develop applications which can interoperate with one another through open and freely available tools, protocols, and interfaces. It’s called the internet and it’s more compelling than AOL was in 1994 and Facebook in 2007.

Facebook is the new AOL [kottke.org]

This entry was posted on Friday, June 29th, 2007 at 9:26 pm and is filed under open web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “Jason Kottke on Facebook as the new AOL”

  1. Frédéric Wenzel Says:
    June 29th, 2007 at 11:51 pm

    I read his article this morning too and I was solemnly nodding at it as well. Open web yay, proprietary sub-platforms nay!

  2. Divergio Says:
    July 4th, 2007 at 7:45 pm

    I think you may be missing the point of facebook. Facebook is a social networking site. Most people don’t know how to write HTML, much less create their own websites. Even if they made them, most people would forget to include basic information about themselves (or wouldn’t trust the internet to display that information). If I run into someone in real life and then add them as a facebook friend, I can expect a certain standard of basic information that they’ve put up about themselves. This is not true if I ask for their website.

    I see little similarity between AOL and Facebook. Facebook is generally not used to access information on arbitrary topics or to get information about companies, it’s used for visiting friends pages.

    As for the facebook “platform,” I think we’ll see the activity in all the extraneous areas decrease until the only “applications” that still are commonly used are the ones that actually take advantage of social networking functions. These functions, those provided by the actual facebook part of facebook, contrary to your statement are not supported by a widely used protocol or interface.

    Addendum: I just noticed the site you linked to has an addendum. One of the possible futures is that facebook could turn itself inside out, making itself the social network utility for other sites. I find that outcome interesting.