Nerdology • Taking 5: Facebook Platform

Taking 5: Facebook Platform

A strange thing happened to me the other night at a bar while I was in LA. I was taking to a girl and as we were parting ways she handed me her iPhone, Facebook app open, and said, “send yourself a friend request.” Jaw, meet Floor.

Foregoing the phone number / email address and leaping directly to a web service that everybody uses is exactly the kind of experience I should cherish, however I was actually taken aback. Yes, I sent myself a friend request. But this experience coupled with the recent announcement of the new Facebook Connect started to get me thinking… thinking gets me into trouble. Last time I was thinking I wrote 1000 words on MySpace.

I’ve been trying to get my head around what all of this means, and I think it comes down to 3 things.

First. Facebook is targeting Digg. Loads of people use Digg to get their news and find out what is going on on the internets. Adding a Like button to a news article is essentially the same thing as adding a Digg button. The difference is audience. 400 million people are on Facebook so clicking Like on an article has the potential to reach more people.

If I am already checking Facebook it would be great to have a separate news feed to see what things people are liking outside of Facebook… don’t think that isn’t coming. I also will expect (like digg) to be able to see a list of the most liked things of the day/week/month. It will help people know what is happening outside of Facebook.

Second. They’re making a play on the search game. Once Facebook has a page or an easy way to see what the most liked things on the internet are don’t think there won’t be a search bar on that page. Now you’re searching outside of just Facebook and you’re getting results prioritized by actual people deciding if they like something rather than an algorithm and a hit counter. That’s powerful.

Third. Unilateral login. This is a two sided coin for me. I am excited because I love the idea of having one thing that gets me in everywhere. Yes. I want that. It simplifies my life.

However, and this is a big one, there is a privacy issue. Actually there are two. Already when I click a Like button on Engadget (or wherever) it shows up on my Facebook page in the recent activity. I don’t want every time I leave a comment on a website for a notification to go out, or for it to post on my Wall. I don’t need the world to know everything I’ve done ever on every site. I just don’t. It’s the same reason I don’t have a Twitter account.

I also don’t want Facebook to know everywhere I go. I’m actually not super concerned about that the second part of this, because I don’t go anywhere that is going to get me in trouble… it’s mostly news sites and blogs. Not a whole lot to pay attention to, but still, I don’t like the idea that someone could pay attention to it.

Accomplishing these three goals (by way of Like button and sign in) is going to generate a lot of money for Facebook because they are going to have all kinds of statistics that they are going to be able to sell either to advertisers or directly to websites.

Knowing all this Facebook Platform is going to either be really good, or really bad for the internet. It’s great to have a ton of websites (from Engadget to Levis) rolling out Like functionality, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t drawbacks. This also has the potential to put the Internet into a holding pattern and it potentially gives a lot of power to Facebook. Far more than Google since Facebook is now in these other sites.