Oh things are a changing……
I remember years and years ago when Yahoo first started evolving into a portal. First of course it was the directory service, remember there was no Google Search in those days. Then they added some news information, ads (of course) and eventually Yahoo! Mail.
Of course there were many steps in between those I mentioned but I think my point can stand now. Yahoo! ‘was’ a place on the web where you could spend the majority of your time reading news, sending emails, building website and much more.
It was in many ways the Anti-AOL, free and open. Two things AOL was not.
With AOL we had a closed or ‘walled-garden’ Internet that discouraged open space and the limitless nature of the Internet. Once the web stopped being so darned complicated it was the beginning of the end for this once mightiest of Internet companies.
But since 2004, there has been another giant in the making – Facebook – the ‘de jour’ term from as early as 2007, now has over 200 million users (worldwide). This is huge by anyone’s estimation except for the Internet’s No.1 and No.2 of course – Google & Yahoo!.
What is interesting though is what it means that Facebook is so successful now. After all the world made a choice nearly 10 years ago when we started leaving AOL behind and embraced a much more open version of the Internet.
So what has changed? In today’s Internet….
1) we have many many more websites and options than we had before, an order of magnitude of increased complexity for users.
2) Increased complexity has led to multiple forms of expression
3) your identity now exists online and
4) the web has fragmented that identity amongst many services & web apps.
Facebook has jumped into the web ‘defragmenting’ your personality with its AOL like approach to your identity. Bringing together what you look like, what you do, who you know and where you go better than anyone. Yes yes, Friendster was first and MySpace was there before as well, but that only proves the need we had.
Facebook has done this by integrating these desire into one slick service and when users became upset with its initially too AOL like behaviour they launched Facebook Connect. This service allows Facebook to further consolidate their core value as the centre of our online lives and additionally removing the need for all those passwords, signup forms and more.
Facebook Connect is a huge huge feature that makes every bit of difference as they grow. With this feature they are now able to retain tight control over their service while still allowing users to enjoy the ‘free’ web.
In essence with Facebook Connect, Facebook has now built a hybrid version of AOL and Yahoo without any of the draw backs of either platform. No ‘walled garden’ bye bye AOL and no or low identity ‘fragmentation’ which is what Yahoo! ushered in.
If you are wondering where Facebook is going, you have know why it exists and this is my theory.
What do you think?