I won't deny that Facebook can make certain connections easier - of course it can, that's what it's designed to do. But how large is the net positive effect?
Think about the difference search engines can make to finding information. Without the web and search engines, how can you find information on a topic? You have to go to a local library - hit or miss on what information you'll find, especially for something obscure, or find some magazines or a book on the topic, or maybe find an expert who's willing to explain it to you.
Think of the difference social networks can make for keeping in touch with people. Without social networks, you have to remember to send them an email to see what's up, maybe pick up the phone now and then and give someone a call, meet up at a pub now and then, send a card for Christmas.
Now, to me both are incredibly convenient services, but by FAR only one can be described as world-changing.
Uh, "zero"? Maybe some people compulsively stare at Facebook for hours at a time and decide against going out tonight to click "refresh" instead, and I suppose there's always a marginal effect, but most people just stuff Facebook in their downtime or other extra time, from what I can see. Obsessives will obsess anyhow so even that's probably not a problem.
And then of course you stack this up against the real connections renewed that would have expired and your argument is just not credible.
Then from the other side you equate a social network to a phone call or email, completely ignoring the astonishing fact that Facebook has signed up a double-digit percentage of the entire world population in a single social network. Or how common it is on Facebook to find people you may never have seen again otherwise. Or the fact that you can maintain passive contact with networks an order of magnitude greater than what is possible via traditional social channels.
And I say this as someone who doesn't particularly value any of that. I log into Facebook maybe twice a month, and I don't particularly admire their mission. However when it comes to your closing statement, I'm in agreement, except with the inverse proposition.
I am, because all the information on the Internet is useless if you can't find it.
>completely ignoring the astonishing fact that Facebook has signed up a double-digit percentage of the entire world population in a single social network.
Everyone in the world IS a single social network, barring several small isolated tribes here and there. The phone network is a single social network. Email is a single social network. Facebook formalizes and makes access to this network easier, but to a lesser extent than Google makes access to the world's information easier.
>the fact that you can maintain passive contact with networks an order of magnitude greater than what is possible via traditional social channels.
That is a fair point, and I'm certainly not denying that Facebook is useful, but I stand by my assertion. If you could somehow quantify and compare the difference made to society by search engines vs. social networks, search engines have a far larger impact.
Let me put it another way: Google is to the printing press as Facebook is to ???
Yes, Google is nothing without the rest of the Internet, but so is Facebook, so I'm content to run with that comparison even if it's not perfect.
What does this tell you about the real strength of this friendship? I don't mean to pick on you; I hear this argument a lot and I don't understand it. A really good friendship would have found a way to stay alive over 10 years with or without Facebook.
That's true, and I certainly have friends that I intend to stay in touch with for many years to come, Facebook or no. Relationships fall into concentric circles though; there's acquaintances on the outside that only care about slightly, and there's lifelong friends near the centre. Somewhere in between are people that you would certainly talk to if you ever ran into them at random, but wouldn't make much of an effort to stay in touch otherwise.
Facebook is ideal for these kind of relationships, because the semi-public nature of wall posts keeps things casual (letters and emails feel very intimate, and it can be strange sending a long "hey, what's up?" message to someone you don't know that well). There's also the fact that you can see their recent activities and photographs, giving you an easy conversational opener ("I saw you visited x/did y/know z, how was it?"). I think it was quite carefully designed to afford such interaction styles.
[1] Sending various forms of media to each other, having a historical record of communication, etc.
[2] Privacy controls, control over your data, etc.
I mean, I recently left my home town to go to a new school and when I wanted to say good bye to my friends who I don't normally talk to- I wrote on their walls, but I also called them-
But in the end, you are right, I'm not quite subjective because of the way I grew up.
I communicate with my high-school friends more often than the days of ICQ, MSN, and Friendster joined together.
Keep in mind that me and my friends have passed university and are working and have our own life. Oh, by the way, we live in different continents of the world.
That's pretty world changing for her.
I have not been in touch with my dad in the Philippines for almost 20 years. We lost contact when my mom, brother and I moved and we didn't have telephones back then.
Last year, my half-sister found my brother and me on Facebook.
It was good to learn to that my dad is still alive and got to talk to him after all these years.
With Facebook you open up a very non committal link into each others lives, where you may send each other the odd message, comment on what each other is doing, without getting right back into things straight away.
Basically, you just implied what Facebook has done - redefine how we build and maintain relationships. That's a huge social impact.
Now that every single damn website has "Login with Facebook Account" button, I think it's a big deal.
Now that every phone comes out with "syncing with Facebook" feature, I think it's a big deal.
Now that people actually put their credit card info and buy stuffs on Facebook (although it's small right now), I think it's a big deal.
Now that there is a single entity that keeps track of our life/relationship history, I think it's a big deal.
I mean... these are probably not a big deal for you, but many people in the tech industry think so. That is why the valuation of Facebook is so high. It has a lot of potential. It's not all about just.. attracting people to increase traffic and spamming them with ads. It's more about how the social aspect of everyone's lives have been redefined. There was letters, then phone, then emails, then now.. facebook/twitter/etc.
Plus, Lars cannot give Wave "another try" at Facebook. Google Wave is a Google's property and anything related to Wave technology will make a good reason for Google to sue Facebook -- just to worsen the relationship of the two companies. Facebook probably wanted the leader who excels are putting out great products. That's what Lars is great at.
Actually, the underlying protocol is open and some of the related software has been released under an Apache license:
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave_Federation_Protocol
In short - my definition of Facebook. its the web in the CONTEXT of your social circle and that has changed the web biz game, it has only begun to change the world 'proper' and thats what i think excites people like Lars.
A lot of technical people look at the collection of services that Facebook is offering and can easily enumerate instances of prior art and thus I imagine feel somewhat dismissive of Facebook.
"Farmville? Why not just go to any of the number of flash game portals that have existed since the early 2000s?", "Messageboards? Older than dirt".
Technical people tend to forget that the average person doesn't like searching, and needs to be told what they "should be doing" (topically, that was probably part of the problem with Wave's lack of adoption - too much freedom, too different - people need to be guided). People prefer having "everything in one place" with explicit parallels (rather than absolute freedom) to what is important to them.
I would hazard to guess that to the average person, Facebook is the web. That part is kind of game changing (and arguably, not necessarily in a good way).
Something is going on here, and IMO what is happening is most difficult to understand for bleeding edge techies like the people on this forum.
Actually - The Social Network may be mostly fiction but it does capture an idea about facebook that I never realized before - the idea that it's important who you know. Which is the essence of places like Harvard. And the essence of Facebook. Like many others I thought facebook was just a slightly less annoying version of MySpace or friendster, but, as it turns out, it's not, and you have got to give credit to Mark Zuckerberg to understand this from the very start.
Apart from all that, facebook is now the new Google in terms of desirability to work there. No wonder, as it's pre-IPO so you stand to make very good money once they do their IPO. Especially as an exec. You can be a me-too rich person like the Googleionnaires who didn't do anything special except get hired by Google before the IPO. I get the appeal.
Facebook has a number of features for communication that email doesn't have:
1) Passive communication: the fact you can go and check someone's profile and see what they have been up to is very powerful
2) Default public communication. By making communication public by default it lets your other friends and family benefit from any communication you do with a 3rd party
3) No email addresses - people change email addresses a lot more than they should. The only comparable problem on Facebook is when women get married and change their lastname, but I've never seen any problems arising from this.
That really just scratches the surface of the differences.
Sometimes, doing something better really is enough to make a huge difference.
- It helps me connect better with people I already known for long (There are a lot of people I'd have been out of touch with if not for Facebook)
- It helps me also maintain a network of 'loose connections'. These are people I don't know very well, but can now easily keep in touch with. I would otherwise have never written or phoned them.
- I get a lot of relevant content from Facebook - this includes links to articles/blogs that are relevant to me,videos that I find to be fun/useful/inspiring.
- I have had some of the most interesting debates on people's Facebook walls. Some very long ones. At times, we've decided to then take the debate offline, and have actually followed that up with a debate when we meet.
facebook for me is content discovery + keeping in touch + updating + discussing. Thats a lot, and quite simply, it is not very far from being at the center of a lot of my online activity.
You can search for pages, things, groups. I'm not sure if this is a good thing, if having this internet where you're forced to reveal your identity is a good or bad thing, but it definitely has the ability to change the world.
Google can dominate the rest of the net, but if your net only means facebook then the chocolate factory just got made irrelevent.
Now imaging facebook does a deal with a phone maker to only connect to facebook, or to only have free data to facebook then Google's ad revenue goes down
When you can connect and understand the social interactions of 500 million people, you can do amazing things.