8 ms·

From the article Lars says that facebook has changed the world. I don't see this being the case. So a lot of people like to see what their friends are doing and

From the article Lars says that facebook has changed the world. I don't see this being the case. So a lot of people like to see what their friends are doing and play games that challenge the average sheep's IQ, but what does facebook do that is world changing? Aside from keeping an enormous number people 'busy' for hours a day that might otherwise have been spent studying, working or actually doing things? I am skeptical about facebook's benefit to the world as anything more that entertainment du jour. Maybe Lars was just interested in giving wave another try under the facebook brand instead. It certainly might make more sense in a social connectivity company. I'm not arguing that facebook isn't very popular, just with point that it's world changing. Regardless, I wish him all the best in his new job.

nikster 16y ago
Yeah I would have said the same thing before Facebook had 500m users and before people spent more time on FB than on any other place on the internet. 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.
gilbertl 16y ago
Without Facebook, I would have quite a bit of trouble connecting with my friends and families around the world.
- sfphotoarts 16y ago
  This may be the case, although, I'd argue that Facebook really doesn't do anything that makes it any easier for you to connect with your friends and family than email does. However, let's say it does, that still doesn't mean Facebook is world changing, it just means its a better mousetrap.
  - nl 16y ago
    And email doesn't make it any easier to connect with friends and family than paper based mail does. Oh wait.. it does... 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.
- spiffworks 16y ago
  Yes, but Facebook is fungible. In the same way that MySpace and Orkut were. The only thing that's holding people on your website is other people and a bunch of dumb games. You can say whatever you want about Google, but there is not a single search engine today that is as good in all cases. That's why I'll bet my money that 10 years from now Google will be well and going strong, whereas I have no idea what will happen to Facebook.
fiveo 16y ago
For better or worse, they do change the world. 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.
- bbgm 16y ago
  So very true . I live in the US, and my close friends are distributed around the world. My parents live in Africa, my brother is currently in Europe, cousins in Israel, UK, etc, and former colleagues around the world as well. We all manage to stay in touch. Facebook wasn't the first service that allowed everyone to do that, but it's certainly done a better job of getting everyone on. Has it changed the world? Not at the level at which Google did, but it's certainly made it a lot easier to keep in touch with a broad group of people.
iskander 16y ago
Setting aside your personal judgments on how other people spend their time, do you actually not think that facebook has had a large impact on how (primarily younger) people socialize, understand each other, and think about their relationships?
- dbz 16y ago
  As a primarily younger person (18), it hasn't changed anything. It hasn't made me "hang out" with anyone I don't hang out with regularly ect. 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-
  - drm237 16y ago
    So you were 12 when Facebook was started and had Facebook your entire high school life? It seems a bit hard to be subjective then since you haven't known any different.
    - dbz 16y ago
      That's a valid point; nevertheless, I have plenty of (some very close) friends that do not have Facebook- or recently acquired it so that they may see photos of themselves, so I can easily speak about their lives, but I do not know if that counts (does it?) because they grew up around people who have facebooks. But in the end, you are right, I'm not quite subjective because of the way I grew up.
      - chunkbot 16y ago
        I think you both mean "objective", not "subjective".
  - BrandonM 16y ago
    It's hard to realize the value of Facebook when you don't yet have friends all over the country (or the world).
alastair 16y ago
There are examples where facebook has been the catalyst for something 'world changing' - http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/business/worldbusiness/08iht-protest11.html?_r=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/business/worldbusiness/08i... When you can connect and understand the social interactions of 500 million people, you can do amazing things.
runT1ME 16y ago
You bring up good points, but you also aren't taking into account facebook's potential to change the world. What we're seeing develop is really a de anonymized private version of the Internet. They have their own substitute emailing system that in a lot of ways have eliminated spam. 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.
okjnboikjnb 16y ago
Facebook is the new AOL - but this time could work. If you only message friends through facebook, only share photos and video in facebook and only read blogs in facebook - then what else on the net do you need? 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
terpua 16y ago
My girlfriend had lost contact with her mother for over 6 years and recently found each other on Facebook. They reunited a couple of weeks ago and have been communicating ever since. They are both so happy. That's pretty world changing for her.
- corin_ 16y ago
  Why hadn't she been in touch before? I find it slightly far-fetched that she had actually tried to get in touch before, and the only way she managed was through facebook.
  - megablast 16y ago
    Maybe just the fact that it makes it so easy for people to look up other people. All you need is there name, and know what they look like. Pretty hard to do that anywhere else.
  - terpua 16y ago
    Unfortunately, lost phone numbers, non-permanent home address and the lack of a white pages made it impossible.
- jaspero 16y ago
  Seriously? Your GF needed Facebook to reunite with her mother? As stereotypical as I may sound, but she needs to get her life back and socialize beyond Facebook. It's simply absurd.
  - robryan 16y ago
    Well, if you have been completely out of someones life for long enough, calling them or meeting them at first could be awkward enough to discourage either person to put the effort into setting it up. 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.
- dannyr 16y ago
twidlit 16y ago
When you look at it zoomed out, Facebook combined disparate web avenues (chat, contacts, forums, game portals, bboards, adspace) into one place and added a thick air of mass adoption. This is hardly world-changing innovation-wise but it is game-changing in making the web more usable and understandable. Facebook is a fork of the whole web (Open web vs Facebook Web). I am betting the farm that this is what internally facebook is running with. This is a powerful motivator because they can justify to themselves and to everyone in the company the act of copying>improving elements of the open web into it. This is why a Facebook email, search, OS is inevitable. 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.
- 2arrs2ells 16y ago
  I think facebook seems to be doing more to embed themselves in the "open web" (connect, instant personalization) than they are bringing elements of the open web into facebook.
- FlemishBeeCycle 16y ago
  I can't help but draw some parallel to AOL/CompuServe/etc. Like Facebook, they were attempts to make the web both more accessible to the average person as well as present in very clear terms what they could do on this new "Information Superhighway". 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).
- bergie 16y ago
dionidium 16y ago
I'm "friends" with people on facebook that would have (or already had) slipped out of my life otherwise. This summer I spent the weekend at my college roommate's house. I hadn't talked to him in nearly 10 years and without facebook I likely never would have again. That seems like a big deal.
- alex_c 16y ago
  I don't want to make assumptions about your specific use of Facebook, but how many possible connections have "you" (a typical FB user) missed because of time spent on Facebook instead of doing other stuff? 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.
  - dasil003 16y ago
    You're conflating search engines with all human knowledge contained on the Internet, even though there are many search engines and many alternate ways of finding information on the Internet (not to mention how much of the best information isn't on the Internet). 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.
nirajr 16y ago
As for Facebook: - 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.
bkhl 16y ago
"So a lot of people like to see what their friends are doing and play games that challenge the average sheep's IQ, but what does facebook do that is world changing" 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.
- follower 16y ago
  > Google Wave is a Google's property and anything related to Wave technology will make a good reason for Google to sue Facebook 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave_Federation_Protocol * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave#Open_source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave#Open_source

nikster 16y ago

Yeah I would have said the same thing before Facebook had 500m users and before people spent more time on FB than on any other place on the internet. 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.

gilbertl 16y ago

Without Facebook, I would have quite a bit of trouble connecting with my friends and families around the world.

sfphotoarts 16y ago
This may be the case, although, I'd argue that Facebook really doesn't do anything that makes it any easier for you to connect with your friends and family than email does. However, let's say it does, that still doesn't mean Facebook is world changing, it just means its a better mousetrap.
- nl 16y ago
  And email doesn't make it any easier to connect with friends and family than paper based mail does. Oh wait.. it does... 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.
spiffworks 16y ago
Yes, but Facebook is fungible. In the same way that MySpace and Orkut were. The only thing that's holding people on your website is other people and a bunch of dumb games. You can say whatever you want about Google, but there is not a single search engine today that is as good in all cases. That's why I'll bet my money that 10 years from now Google will be well and going strong, whereas I have no idea what will happen to Facebook.

fiveo 16y ago

For better or worse, they do change the world. 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.

bbgm 16y ago
So very true . I live in the US, and my close friends are distributed around the world. My parents live in Africa, my brother is currently in Europe, cousins in Israel, UK, etc, and former colleagues around the world as well. We all manage to stay in touch. Facebook wasn't the first service that allowed everyone to do that, but it's certainly done a better job of getting everyone on. Has it changed the world? Not at the level at which Google did, but it's certainly made it a lot easier to keep in touch with a broad group of people.

iskander 16y ago

Setting aside your personal judgments on how other people spend their time, do you actually not think that facebook has had a large impact on how (primarily younger) people socialize, understand each other, and think about their relationships?

dbz 16y ago
As a primarily younger person (18), it hasn't changed anything. It hasn't made me "hang out" with anyone I don't hang out with regularly ect. 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-
- drm237 16y ago
  So you were 12 when Facebook was started and had Facebook your entire high school life? It seems a bit hard to be subjective then since you haven't known any different.
  - dbz 16y ago
    That's a valid point; nevertheless, I have plenty of (some very close) friends that do not have Facebook- or recently acquired it so that they may see photos of themselves, so I can easily speak about their lives, but I do not know if that counts (does it?) because they grew up around people who have facebooks. But in the end, you are right, I'm not quite subjective because of the way I grew up.
    - chunkbot 16y ago
      I think you both mean "objective", not "subjective".
- BrandonM 16y ago
  It's hard to realize the value of Facebook when you don't yet have friends all over the country (or the world).

alastair 16y ago

There are examples where facebook has been the catalyst for something 'world changing' - http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/business/worldbusiness/08iht-protest11.html?_r=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/business/worldbusiness/08i... When you can connect and understand the social interactions of 500 million people, you can do amazing things.

runT1ME 16y ago

You bring up good points, but you also aren't taking into account facebook's potential to change the world. What we're seeing develop is really a de anonymized private version of the Internet. They have their own substitute emailing system that in a lot of ways have eliminated spam. 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.

okjnboikjnb 16y ago

Facebook is the new AOL - but this time could work. If you only message friends through facebook, only share photos and video in facebook and only read blogs in facebook - then what else on the net do you need? 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

terpua 16y ago

My girlfriend had lost contact with her mother for over 6 years and recently found each other on Facebook. They reunited a couple of weeks ago and have been communicating ever since. They are both so happy. That's pretty world changing for her.

corin_ 16y ago
Why hadn't she been in touch before? I find it slightly far-fetched that she had actually tried to get in touch before, and the only way she managed was through facebook.
- megablast 16y ago
  Maybe just the fact that it makes it so easy for people to look up other people. All you need is there name, and know what they look like. Pretty hard to do that anywhere else.
- terpua 16y ago
  Unfortunately, lost phone numbers, non-permanent home address and the lack of a white pages made it impossible.
jaspero 16y ago
Seriously? Your GF needed Facebook to reunite with her mother? As stereotypical as I may sound, but she needs to get her life back and socialize beyond Facebook. It's simply absurd.
- robryan 16y ago
  Well, if you have been completely out of someones life for long enough, calling them or meeting them at first could be awkward enough to discourage either person to put the effort into setting it up. 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.
dannyr 16y ago

twidlit 16y ago

When you look at it zoomed out, Facebook combined disparate web avenues (chat, contacts, forums, game portals, bboards, adspace) into one place and added a thick air of mass adoption. This is hardly world-changing innovation-wise but it is game-changing in making the web more usable and understandable. Facebook is a fork of the whole web (Open web vs Facebook Web). I am betting the farm that this is what internally facebook is running with. This is a powerful motivator because they can justify to themselves and to everyone in the company the act of copying>improving elements of the open web into it. This is why a Facebook email, search, OS is inevitable. 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.

2arrs2ells 16y ago
I think facebook seems to be doing more to embed themselves in the "open web" (connect, instant personalization) than they are bringing elements of the open web into facebook.
FlemishBeeCycle 16y ago
I can't help but draw some parallel to AOL/CompuServe/etc. Like Facebook, they were attempts to make the web both more accessible to the average person as well as present in very clear terms what they could do on this new "Information Superhighway". 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).
bergie 16y ago

dionidium 16y ago

I'm "friends" with people on facebook that would have (or already had) slipped out of my life otherwise. This summer I spent the weekend at my college roommate's house. I hadn't talked to him in nearly 10 years and without facebook I likely never would have again. That seems like a big deal.

alex_c 16y ago
I don't want to make assumptions about your specific use of Facebook, but how many possible connections have "you" (a typical FB user) missed because of time spent on Facebook instead of doing other stuff? 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.
- dasil003 16y ago
  You're conflating search engines with all human knowledge contained on the Internet, even though there are many search engines and many alternate ways of finding information on the Internet (not to mention how much of the best information isn't on the Internet). 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.

nirajr 16y ago

As for Facebook: - 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.

bkhl 16y ago

"So a lot of people like to see what their friends are doing and play games that challenge the average sheep's IQ, but what does facebook do that is world changing" 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.

follower 16y ago
> Google Wave is a Google's property and anything related to Wave technology will make a good reason for Google to sue Facebook 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave_Federation_Protocol * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave#Open_source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave#Open_source