[e-privacy] Facebook Cornering Market on E-Friends - Fight to Own Social Media Heats Up

[Andrea Glorioso]

Commenti?

+++

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/15/AR2009081500040_pf.html

Facebook Cornering Market on E-Friends
Fight to Own Social Media Heats Up

The Washington Post
By Chadwick Matlin
Sunday, August 16, 2009

Facebook just bought the rights to nearly everything you do online.
And it cost them only $47.5 million.

Facebook's purchase of FriendFeed, an obscure social-media platform,
is potentially momentous. To understand why, we must understand
FriendFeed, a start-up that is ubiquitous among techies and unknown to
everybody else. It's a sleek application that acts as a clearinghouse
for all of your social-media activities. Post something to Flickr?
That will show up on your FriendFeed page. Digg something? FriendFeed
will know. Post to Twitter from your phone? FriendFeed will syndicate
your tweets. Once you initially tell it where to look, it will collect
everything and tell it to the world.

The goal is to make automatic that which is all too annoying to do
manually. If I like an article enough to Digg it, why should I then
have to tell all my friends via Facebook or Twitter, as well? The
social-media landscape has become disparate enough -- so many start-
ups controlling so many different pieces of our lives -- that we need
a central place that will organize all of our actions for us. That
place is FriendFeed.

Facebook has recently shown that it, too, wants to be that place. For
all of its genius in harnessing the collective procrastination of an
entire planet, Facebook has usually asked you to come to it. For
example, want to post photos on Flickr but not Facebook? Good luck
telling your Facebook friends about it. In the past, while Facebook
was building an audience, this walled garden helped it build its
audience. If all your friends were on Facebook, then why not post your
pictures there? After all, the point of digital photography in 2009 is
to relive memories with the very group of people that lived through
them in the first place. That group is most likely found on Facebook.

But now Facebook's user base is big enough for it to start looking
out. There's a Twitter application that synchronizes your tweets with
your Facebook status message. And then there's Facebook Connect, the
company's convoluted and potentially brilliant attempt to make
Facebook the official login for the rest of the Internet. Sites that
support Facebook Connect -- about 15,000 and growing -- let users log
in using their Facebook credentials in order to do things such as
leave comments on articles and blog posts. That activity is then
pumped back into the author's Facebook profile, which then promotes
the site where the comment was left. Everybody wins -- especially
Facebook, which gets more content and more of an off-site footprint.

So here's a theory: FriendFeed is going to become the companion to
Facebook Connect; Facebook Connect pipes Facebook out to other sites,
while FriendFeed's technology pipes other sites in. <snip>
..
That leaves two mega-conglomerates that will compete to be the portal
of everything we do on the Internet. Google has long tried to get into
the social game, and Facebook surely wouldn't mind expanding into some
of Google's territory. (Real-time search is the likely entry point.)
It's as classic an American struggle as Pepsi vs. Coke. Two companies,
one market. Regardless of which side you choose, I'm sure Facebook
will be happy to air your thoughts on the matter. Even if you write
them on Blogspot, Google's blogging network. After all, that's why
Facebook bought FriendFeed. So it could own you.

--
      Andrea Glorioso || http://people.digitalpolicy.it/sama/cv/
          M: +32-488-409-055         F: +39-051-930-31-133
  * Le opinioni espresse in questa mail sono del tutto personali *
      * The opinions expressed here are absolutely personal *

	"Constitutions represent the deliberate judgment of the
     people as to the provisions and restraints which [...] will
	secure to each citizen the greatest liberty and utmost
	       protection. They are rules proscribed by 
	         Philip sober to control Philip drunk."
			   David J. Brewer (1893)
       An Independent Judiciary as the Salvation of the Nation
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 196 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.winstonsmith.org/pipermail/e-privacy/attachments/20090817/9ba8692c/attachment.pgp>