4 ms·
All this open-web bitching sounds oddly familiar from back when AOL was a tech monstrosity with nearly everything inside its walled-garden. Facebook is basical
by kirse 9y ago
All this open-web bitching sounds oddly familiar from back when AOL was a tech monstrosity with nearly everything inside its walled-garden. Facebook is basically just a worldwide version of AOL, and plenty of people are tiring of it, just as they tired of AOL's dialup shenanigans and obnoxious floppy disk marketing.
And Facebook, too, will eventually crust away when the underlying tech improves (universal 5G? who knows?) and the next Steve Case / Mark Zuckerberg visionary builds the next generally-centralized service for most internet users. But the open web will survive just fine.
- b0rsuk 9y agoFacebook has wider reach than AOL. Maybe walled garden builders are getting better at their tricks ?
- wuliwong 9y agoIt's a bit of tough comparison. When I used AOL, it was literally my "portal" to the internet. I may have even used a browser embedded in AOL? Facebook is not that for most of it's users. But that being said, if we are just concerned with statistics, obviously Facebook's user numbers are much larger than AOL ever saw but I wonder what percentage of people using the internet use Facebook today vs. AOL "back in the day"?
- b0rsuk 9y agoI read comments on HN that claimed Facebook is many people's only portal to the Internet. Especially in Asia. Recommender reading: How to confuse a Facebook user (2010) https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/feb/11/facebook-readwriteweb https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/feb/11/face...