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?
Actually Roger I don't think you could be much more off base.
What's with the “since 2004″ for a start? AOL and CompuServe go back to the eighties and Yahoo the mid-nineties. Back then there was no GUI for the Internet though some of the services offered them within their walled systems. Dial-up was pretty much the only way to access anything online and you wouldn't even recognize what was available then as being the Internet. Bandwidth was a dream so there was no such thing as streaming audio or video. While we are going a bit crazy over Twitter as our new BFF, there were such things as IRC and Bulletin Boards which did much the same thing.
Closed systems were the norm and apart from the 3 I've already mentioned there were Delphi, the Source, Dialog, Infomart, Orbit and a whole bunch more.
There was a lot of talk on many of those systems about how the Internet was ( and could truly become ) a great place for social causes, sharing of information, and as a way to do collaborative work around the world. We even had a vision for creating what we called the Web 2.0 where commercial based traffic could go. (go figure that wild idea … )
Many of those old systems made the changes necessary to survive, some merged, and some simply didn't figure out how to take advantage of the new technology and disappeared.
Your theory is beyond short sighted. Sure we have more website than before. But then when it all started there were no web sites online, just a series of stops on the end of your dial-up connection. It wasn't even technically possible to connect and merge identities.
Your analysis is akin to suggesting that Alexander Graham Bell messed up because he didn't have packet switching and wireless handsets.
The history goes back. WAY back.
Of course there were 'many steps in between' but you've skipped by them in way too simplistic a manner to actually come up with any reason that digs into the hows, whys, and wherefores of Facebook and any other related service.
But good on 'ya for trying my boy !
Hi Mike!
Thanks for your thoughts. Although I am not sure I follow much of your logic and therefore don't want to say 'no' just to disagree, I will point out that I never said 2004 in reference to AOL or Yahoo!.
If you look at the quote you mention e.g.
“But since 2004, there has been another giant in the making – Facebook – the ‘de jour’ term from as early as 2007″.
Reading the above quote again, I am hoping you realise that this referred to Facebook's beginning not Yahoo! or AOL.
Also I was on the Internet putting up web pages in 1998 (running my own hosting company) so I know what the Internet was like, we (non-AOL users) were worried about how AOL was going to affect the future of the web. That it was so big and closed was a big concern.
Yahoo! was a fast growing portal at the time as were others, and yes closed-systems were normal but again I don't see how that invalidates my point. I spoke about IRC as an example at the “future of journalism” event as an example of how Twitter and its kin are nothing new but I have yet to see how you connect that as a way of saying I am wrong.
Mike I am truly lost because I really don't see how your point relates to my article in the least. Many of the challenges you make are seemingly irrelevant to what I was focusing on as my core argument. Would love to get a follow up comment or even a phone call if necessary to figure out what you are trying to tell me.
Thanks for commenting though! Especially a scrappy one, they are more fun.
Cheers
Roger
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