>1. The Facebook upsides are much smaller than we think.
When I joined Facebook, back in the 'college-only' days, there weren't that many people there. It was about linking together with my dorm-mates, writing silly things on each other's walls (which were just overwriteable textareas), and generally wasting time. While the political motivations of the Facebook creators are debatable (I've heard bad things), on the simplest level, it's just a site where you post some information. They don't own your personal information. It's not a f trap. It's not the only one (Orkut, Myspace, Friendster, etc). At the end of the day, I don't care if an advertiser knows that I am friends with X and I like rock climbing. If they want to market pertinent offers to me, who knows? I might actually be interested.
This entire article is such a massive vortex of nothing ("Post stuff elsewhere, too") that it is evoking an emotional reaction from me. Who needs to be told this stuff?
From experience, I know that the directors of nonprofits need to be told this stuff!
I've run into a downside he doesn't touch on: On Facebook it's plainly obvious to users when people aren't engaging with you -- there's a reverse network effect.
With a normal web presence, it looks the same no matter how many people are visiting it.
With Facebook and other social idioms, it will be clear from the first pageview if noone showed up or if everyone left. The page/group's point in the hype cycle and demographics are obvious too.
Users can identify a failed launch or a ghost town at first glance, intuit that there's nothing there, and click away -- all without looking at your content.
>1. The Facebook upsides are much smaller than we think.
When I joined Facebook, back in the 'college-only' days, there weren't that many people there. It was about linking together with my dorm-mates, writing silly things on each other's walls (which were just overwriteable textareas), and generally wasting time. While the political motivations of the Facebook creators are debatable (I've heard bad things), on the simplest level, it's just a site where you post some information. They don't own your personal information. It's not a f trap. It's not the only one (Orkut, Myspace, Friendster, etc). At the end of the day, I don't care if an advertiser knows that I am friends with X and I like rock climbing. If they want to market pertinent offers to me, who knows? I might actually be interested.
This entire article is such a massive vortex of nothing ("Post stuff elsewhere, too") that it is evoking an emotional reaction from me. Who needs to be told this stuff?