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I could be very very wrong on this, but ill throw it out there. Facebook going away would be much worse. We can just replace Google with Bing and the search r

I could be very very wrong on this, but ill throw it out there. Facebook going away would be much worse. We can just replace Google with Bing and the search results would be good enough. The advertising would shift there too. Our social graph on facebook? That's a whole lot harder to re-create. The other data we have there (interactions, photos,etc.) could not be recreated easily either. Just my two cents

jacquesm 17y ago
Your social graph is replicated in your address book, if you've used facebook to 'reconnect' with people then I'd guess if it was worth enough to you then you'd stay connected with them even if facebook went bust. If you have photos on facebook but not backed up elsewhere (on your own storage devices) then you're setting yourself up for a fall. Interactions with people can happen in many ways outside of facebook, after all it's not like they invented inter-human communications. But sifting through the web without a search engine would be a bit tedious. On the other hand it would stop the spammers cold and people would have to spend some more time linking to places. Who knows what a web without search engines would have looked like, possibly better than the one we have today. But we can hardly go back there.
- dkokelley 17y ago
  If you have photos on facebook but not backed up elsewhere (on your own storage devices) then you're setting yourself up for a fall. A couple of things: There are many photos of myself (and friends) that I enjoy and would love to have around, but weren't taken by myself. At parties, friends take pictures and upload them. I can enjoy them through Facebook, but I wouldn't think to download a backup 'just in case'. It's just too much of a hassle. With my own photos, I have a local copy by default, since the device I took the picture with has the original image. Even if I had a local copy of all my pictures (including pictures by friends), Facebook's tagging feature is pretty neat, and I don't exactly have that functionality with a local copy. I use Picasa and I love the facial recognition features, but it took a lot of training, and a lot of personal intervention to get my library recognized. Facebook has the power of the masses working to tag me and all of my friends. I think that Facebook will remain relevant as long as there is no suitable substitute for those features.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    I sense an opportunity here, a small web app that will backup all the facebook photos that have you tagged.
    - gaius 17y ago
      Such an app would be a violation of the FB ToS I believe (not to mention that you don't own those photos - before copying them off FB you would need to ask whoever took them, and if you're going to do that you might as well ask them to burn you a CD of the full-size photos).
- gaius 17y ago
  "Your social graph is replicated in your address book" Your social graph is a self-updating address book. That's the hard to replicate feature of it. Maybe it's taken for granted now, but I grew up in a time when your email address was probably tied to your school or employer, people moved around a lot for school or work, and mobile phones were still seen as a yuppie toy. Your social graph back then was a fragile thing that needed constant maintenance, repairing broken links, etc. If you were busy it was easy not to even notice it had fallen into disrepair. Our parents generation, or their parents, tended to stay local. Gen X/Y, slackers, whatever we were called, had transportation tech before we had communication tech to match. Facebook solved that problem for 30-somethings so well that today's 20-somethings aren't even aware that it was ever an issue. "If you have photos on facebook but not backed up elsewhere" You've missed the point. I have all my own photos backed up (in a way that is guaranteed to last). I don't have every photo of me taken by other people and even if I did - I don't have all the photos that make up a coherent set of that party or that trip - and even if I did, I couldn't browse those photos and click to an up-to-date contact page for that person. Don't underestimate how deeply FB has embedded itself in people's real lives.

jacquesm 17y ago

Your social graph is replicated in your address book, if you've used facebook to 'reconnect' with people then I'd guess if it was worth enough to you then you'd stay connected with them even if facebook went bust. If you have photos on facebook but not backed up elsewhere (on your own storage devices) then you're setting yourself up for a fall. Interactions with people can happen in many ways outside of facebook, after all it's not like they invented inter-human communications. But sifting through the web without a search engine would be a bit tedious. On the other hand it would stop the spammers cold and people would have to spend some more time linking to places. Who knows what a web without search engines would have looked like, possibly better than the one we have today. But we can hardly go back there.

dkokelley 17y ago
If you have photos on facebook but not backed up elsewhere (on your own storage devices) then you're setting yourself up for a fall. A couple of things: There are many photos of myself (and friends) that I enjoy and would love to have around, but weren't taken by myself. At parties, friends take pictures and upload them. I can enjoy them through Facebook, but I wouldn't think to download a backup 'just in case'. It's just too much of a hassle. With my own photos, I have a local copy by default, since the device I took the picture with has the original image. Even if I had a local copy of all my pictures (including pictures by friends), Facebook's tagging feature is pretty neat, and I don't exactly have that functionality with a local copy. I use Picasa and I love the facial recognition features, but it took a lot of training, and a lot of personal intervention to get my library recognized. Facebook has the power of the masses working to tag me and all of my friends. I think that Facebook will remain relevant as long as there is no suitable substitute for those features.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  I sense an opportunity here, a small web app that will backup all the facebook photos that have you tagged.
  - gaius 17y ago
    Such an app would be a violation of the FB ToS I believe (not to mention that you don't own those photos - before copying them off FB you would need to ask whoever took them, and if you're going to do that you might as well ask them to burn you a CD of the full-size photos).
gaius 17y ago
"Your social graph is replicated in your address book" Your social graph is a self-updating address book. That's the hard to replicate feature of it. Maybe it's taken for granted now, but I grew up in a time when your email address was probably tied to your school or employer, people moved around a lot for school or work, and mobile phones were still seen as a yuppie toy. Your social graph back then was a fragile thing that needed constant maintenance, repairing broken links, etc. If you were busy it was easy not to even notice it had fallen into disrepair. Our parents generation, or their parents, tended to stay local. Gen X/Y, slackers, whatever we were called, had transportation tech before we had communication tech to match. Facebook solved that problem for 30-somethings so well that today's 20-somethings aren't even aware that it was ever an issue. "If you have photos on facebook but not backed up elsewhere" You've missed the point. I have all my own photos backed up (in a way that is guaranteed to last). I don't have every photo of me taken by other people and even if I did - I don't have all the photos that make up a coherent set of that party or that trip - and even if I did, I couldn't browse those photos and click to an up-to-date contact page for that person. Don't underestimate how deeply FB has embedded itself in people's real lives.