6 ms·

We are in the AOL days of social networking

122 points by imaginator 16y ago

27182818284 16y ago
There are more people using Facebook than there are people in the US. AOL and its chat rooms were the "AOL days" of social networking. We're in a type of middle. The line from Space Balls comes to mind: "We're at now, now."
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
  - portman 16y ago
    The Quantcast metric you're referring to is 80 million unique US people per week. Facebook's number is the number of global active users.
MBlume 16y ago
this article mostly seems like a lot of applause lights. The author likes 'open' and wants to believe that 'open' will win. It's won once before, and so the author calls it 'inevitable'. That's not supporting an argument. The universe is still allowed to turn around and say 'so what,' and do something different.
- michaelchisari 16y ago
  It's inevitable, because those of us who are working on it aren't going to give up, amongst other reasons. Further, the ability to have niche/community/localized, etc. social networking sites that inter-operate is an achilles heel to the one-site-fits-all approach of Facebook. Once a set of social networking sites come out that inter-operate, and people see how it's done, then Facebook, Myspace, etc. will all feel very antiquated and walled off. Imagine when people started trading email addresses, and the AOL people had to say "no, I can't email, but my aol screen name is..."
  - dasil003 16y ago
    That doesn't mean it's inevitable, you may well die before you succeed. The ability for federated social networking to take off hinges on user experience. It's not impossible, but Facebook has a huge advantage in crafting a user experience because it doesn't have to worry about the technical pitfalls of a federated system.
    - michaelchisari 16y ago
      This isn't just about myself, though. There are approximately 50 other projects all working towards distributed social network. Some may be farther than others, but there's just too much interest from the open source world to say that Facebook's reign (or the reign of walled gardens, even) is immortal. And I would even wager that, once a protocol is adopted, that some of the smaller social networking sites will add support for it as a way to compete with the big guys. It may take time, it may not be for a while, and it won't happen over night, but those of us who believe strongly in the open web are a bit too zealous to ever admit defeat.
      - dasil003 16y ago
        Sure, but how long will it take to topple Facebook? The article talks about 2011. I'd be willing to bet Facebook will still be the largest social network in 2020. 10 years in tech is an eternity, so I feel that that's a pretty strong assertion. To say that some kind of set of open social networking protocol will dominate in 15, 20, 30 years is a pretty open-ended prediction that's hard to argue with.
        michaelchisari 16y ago
        My prediction is that by around 2013/2014, Facebook will use an open, distributed protocol. Just like AOL eventually embraced SMTP and the web. They will still be one of the biggest nodes (expect one of China's social networks to fight for that crown, however), but as time goes on, it will matter less and less. Just like AOL.
BarkMore 16y ago
What if social networking is like instant messaging? After many years, the proprietary instant messaging services have not been replaced with an open alternative. Open does not always win.
- jncraton 16y ago
  Give it time. At some point in the not so distant future, we could all be using smartphones that just have data plans. Then we'll get to see if SMS sticks around.
  - BahUnfair 16y ago
    I personally find SMS far to expensive for the amount of information I can communicate using it. Texting is last resort, I much prefer to call someone or attempt to contact them on steam or facebook IM.
- jonknee 16y ago
  IM still hasn't made any serious money...
  - imaginator 16y ago
    sometimes its about doing the right thing
    - jonknee 16y ago
      What about running proprietary IM networks is "doing the right thing"?
      - sewerhorse 16y ago
        Keeping them alive even though they don't rake in any serious money.
        16y ago
dasil003 16y ago
I don't like the analogy. AOL wanted to be the gatekeeper to the Internet and charge users a fee for their "premium" content. They were replaced because the internet is infrastructure, and a million other entities created sites and services that were better than what AOL was trying to charge for. Facebook on the other hand, embraces the open web, and sinks it's hooks in via extremely elegant and lightweight hooks like Login with Facebook and FBJS that have impeccable usability and deliver measurable value to site owners. They are not fighting against current trends, rather they are defining and riding them. Facebook will not be in trouble until their business model starts to collide with user interests. Privacy concerns are a potential problem for them, but don't fool yourselves that even a sizable minority of users care about that yet.
- michaelchisari 16y ago
  Facebook on the other hand, embraces the open web No offense, but I find that to be an odd definition of "open web". They don't support a distributed protocol and they don't support data portability in any meaningful way.
  - gloob 16y ago
    To rephrase what I think the poster's point was: AOL wanted to pretend the rest of the net didn't exist. We've seen where that game plan leads: irrelevance. Facebook, contrariwise, is willing to accept the existence of non-Facebook material on the net, even if the long-term plan is to Borg it.
  - dasil003 16y ago
    I didn't say Facebook supports the open web. I said they embrace it (think MS embrace and extend). They don't expect you to stay on Facebook all the time, they give tools to allow Facebook to be on all sites, and they give site owners incentive to use those tools.
    - catshirt 16y ago
      I think what you're neglecting is the fact that most of these tools actually further silo your information to Facebook. Consider Facebook's comments widget for example. Yes there is clear value for the publisher, but your theory starts to fall apart on the other end of the spectrum: Facebook gets to silo all these comments and call them their own. The same principal extends to likes and worse yet, user accounts. Facebook encouraging publishers to user their profiles, comments, likes, friends, etc. takes all of this data out of the publishers hands. Imho, this is not embracing the open web by any standards.
timdellinger 16y ago
As much as I agree with the overall premise (Facebook won't be king of the mountain forever), I'm still a bit unsure about what the driving force will be for users to go from Facebook to "open" alternatives. The driving force for leaving AOL was clear: there's a big, exciting internet out there that's more interesting and innovative than AOL chatrooms and AOL keywords, and the user base was also getting a little more comfortable with computers and didn't need AOL to hold it's hand so much any more. I don't see a similar driving force for leaving Facebook. As a matter of fact, Facebook is embracing innovation, pre-emptively embracing whatever things might give users a reason to jump ship.
- jaxn 16y ago
  Also, it would be foolish to think that Facebook isn't also aware of this analogy. I am certain they are looking at how AOL lost their stronghold and working to correct those mistakes. That is likely the driving force behind FB's willingness to participate in the open web (on their terms).
  - imaginator 16y ago
    I'm sure they are aware of the analogy, but they are also enjoying the Goldman Sachs sponsored money-go-round and will eventually need to step off.
- bobz 16y ago
  I'm not sure the comparison is so precise that the outcome is predicted. There's no sure bet that Facebook will go the way of AOL. I like this comparison more as a mitigating factor to closed-web alarmism. This is not the first time the open web has felt itself under attack. And if a big player DOES make moves to try to get in between the free flow of information we all know and love, there are historical examples of the free web fighting back, and winning! I don't use Facebook, but I don't think it's evil... yet. But it's shown some scary tendencies. It's nice to know we've seen a company abuse it's massively dominant market share, and pay.
- phlux 16y ago
  I agree with you, and came ere to say what you have -- however I can name a few reasons why FB users will leave/choose to be non-participants. (Disclaimer, I do not have, nor shall I ever have a FB account) Lets assume that in the next few years FB userbase doubles. 20% of the population of the planet has an account. The amount of data held on those users is immense, and as such, of keen interest to the corporate oligopoly that is government -- There is a very good incentive alone to not have an account on FB. I am sure there will be a not-insignificant number of people whose ability to get jobs/keep jobs will be inhibited by FB. I also can imagine FB fueling interest in even more privacy as well - and groups of people with a personal desire to have absolutely ZERO information about them online will be a small but real niche in the populous.
taylorwc 16y ago
I agree with the sentiment in general, but I don't think the analogy is as solid as the author portrays. Facebook and Twitter, unlike AOL, have not only embraced, but in many ways encouraged other apps and social communities to be built around them, leverage their APIs, and have tried to be a unifying hub of activity, rather than the SOLE destination for their users.
T_S_ 16y ago
Add new entities, add new relations between them. The "social" in the network starts to fade and it simply becomes the network we use to get what we want. Facebook has a nice beachhead, but that does not mean the game is over.
rythie 16y ago
I hope we'll end up with something open, but I have my doubts. There are still many closed systems that indicate that it may not happen: * Apple released their closed Mac Store today after 25+ years of a open system, to add to their many closed systems. Apple have shown several times they will block apps. they don't like. * We've had 35+ years of games consoles, on which the games are tightly controlled by the supplier of the console. Microsoft have already indicated they will not allow certain types of games in to use Kinect. * 100+ years after the invention of the Telephone we have Skype, which is controlled by a single company. * Whilst Email is open. Microsoft, Google or Yahoo control so much of the market they can and do effectively stop you talking to your customers by marking your mails as spam and making it hard to appeal (e.g. previous spammer on your IP)
- pyre 16y ago
  > * 100+ years after the invention of the Telephone > we have Skype, which is controlled by a single company. Bad example. See Ma Ball ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System ).
  - rythie 16y ago
    Good point, I was just thinking about global monopolies. BT of course did a similar thing in the U.K.
EGreg 16y ago
Yes, this is very true. See http://myownstream.com/blog#2010-05-21 http://myownstream.com/blog#2010-05-21 ;-)
RobPfeifer 16y ago
Open doesn't always win - check out Tim Wu's book the Master Switch. It traces the history of telephone, TV, radio, film (and the Internet, though I haven't gotten there yet). Theodore Vail and AT&T essentially created a massive closed network and David Sarnoff at RCA/NBC did the same with radio & television. They eventually lost their grip on their monopolies, but the government was involved in both. While this isn't a perfect analogy, the imperialist nature of their founders sounds familiar :) One interesting question: If Facebook and Twitter are NBC and CBS, who will be the cable provider for social networking?
- torpy 16y ago
  From the looks of things: Comcast et al.
- wladimir 16y ago
  That's very USA-centered though. Usually, something was open in some countries and closed in others, depending on legislation in that country. Closed systems of global scale are a pretty new thing, and it's not clear how this will play out.
dshjtykyu 16y ago
●---------------------------------------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●---------------------------------------●
jasonkester 16y ago
That metaphor just doesn't work. AOL was a walled garden that survived first by convincing people that there was no real Internet outside of it, and then by trying to pretend that the "Internet" was just a part of AOL. Eventually, people caught on that there was in fact this giant Internet out there all by itself, and AOL wasn't technically required to access it. So people left. Facebook, however, is the entire Facebook. There is no giant social entity outside of it that people are being kept away from. It's an end product. So sure, somebody may make a bigger, better one. But they're not going to suddenly remove the blindfold and expose Facebook users to the Truth, because it's just plain not out there.

122 points by imaginator 16y ago

There are more people using Facebook than there are people in the US. AOL and its chat rooms were the "AOL days" of social networking. We're in a type of middle. The line from Space Balls comes to mind: "We're at now, now."

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
- portman 16y ago
  The Quantcast metric you're referring to is 80 million unique US people per week. Facebook's number is the number of global active users.

MBlume 16y ago

this article mostly seems like a lot of applause lights. The author likes 'open' and wants to believe that 'open' will win. It's won once before, and so the author calls it 'inevitable'. That's not supporting an argument. The universe is still allowed to turn around and say 'so what,' and do something different.

michaelchisari 16y ago
It's inevitable, because those of us who are working on it aren't going to give up, amongst other reasons. Further, the ability to have niche/community/localized, etc. social networking sites that inter-operate is an achilles heel to the one-site-fits-all approach of Facebook. Once a set of social networking sites come out that inter-operate, and people see how it's done, then Facebook, Myspace, etc. will all feel very antiquated and walled off. Imagine when people started trading email addresses, and the AOL people had to say "no, I can't email, but my aol screen name is..."
- dasil003 16y ago
  That doesn't mean it's inevitable, you may well die before you succeed. The ability for federated social networking to take off hinges on user experience. It's not impossible, but Facebook has a huge advantage in crafting a user experience because it doesn't have to worry about the technical pitfalls of a federated system.
  - michaelchisari 16y ago
    This isn't just about myself, though. There are approximately 50 other projects all working towards distributed social network. Some may be farther than others, but there's just too much interest from the open source world to say that Facebook's reign (or the reign of walled gardens, even) is immortal. And I would even wager that, once a protocol is adopted, that some of the smaller social networking sites will add support for it as a way to compete with the big guys. It may take time, it may not be for a while, and it won't happen over night, but those of us who believe strongly in the open web are a bit too zealous to ever admit defeat.
    - dasil003 16y ago
      Sure, but how long will it take to topple Facebook? The article talks about 2011. I'd be willing to bet Facebook will still be the largest social network in 2020. 10 years in tech is an eternity, so I feel that that's a pretty strong assertion. To say that some kind of set of open social networking protocol will dominate in 15, 20, 30 years is a pretty open-ended prediction that's hard to argue with.
      - michaelchisari 16y ago
        My prediction is that by around 2013/2014, Facebook will use an open, distributed protocol. Just like AOL eventually embraced SMTP and the web. They will still be one of the biggest nodes (expect one of China's social networks to fight for that crown, however), but as time goes on, it will matter less and less. Just like AOL.

BarkMore 16y ago

What if social networking is like instant messaging? After many years, the proprietary instant messaging services have not been replaced with an open alternative. Open does not always win.

jncraton 16y ago
Give it time. At some point in the not so distant future, we could all be using smartphones that just have data plans. Then we'll get to see if SMS sticks around.
- BahUnfair 16y ago
  I personally find SMS far to expensive for the amount of information I can communicate using it. Texting is last resort, I much prefer to call someone or attempt to contact them on steam or facebook IM.
jonknee 16y ago
IM still hasn't made any serious money...
- imaginator 16y ago
  sometimes its about doing the right thing
  - jonknee 16y ago
    What about running proprietary IM networks is "doing the right thing"?
    - sewerhorse 16y ago
      Keeping them alive even though they don't rake in any serious money.
      - 16y ago

dasil003 16y ago

I don't like the analogy. AOL wanted to be the gatekeeper to the Internet and charge users a fee for their "premium" content. They were replaced because the internet is infrastructure, and a million other entities created sites and services that were better than what AOL was trying to charge for. Facebook on the other hand, embraces the open web, and sinks it's hooks in via extremely elegant and lightweight hooks like Login with Facebook and FBJS that have impeccable usability and deliver measurable value to site owners. They are not fighting against current trends, rather they are defining and riding them. Facebook will not be in trouble until their business model starts to collide with user interests. Privacy concerns are a potential problem for them, but don't fool yourselves that even a sizable minority of users care about that yet.

michaelchisari 16y ago
Facebook on the other hand, embraces the open web No offense, but I find that to be an odd definition of "open web". They don't support a distributed protocol and they don't support data portability in any meaningful way.
- gloob 16y ago
  To rephrase what I think the poster's point was: AOL wanted to pretend the rest of the net didn't exist. We've seen where that game plan leads: irrelevance. Facebook, contrariwise, is willing to accept the existence of non-Facebook material on the net, even if the long-term plan is to Borg it.
- dasil003 16y ago
  I didn't say Facebook supports the open web. I said they embrace it (think MS embrace and extend). They don't expect you to stay on Facebook all the time, they give tools to allow Facebook to be on all sites, and they give site owners incentive to use those tools.
  - catshirt 16y ago
    I think what you're neglecting is the fact that most of these tools actually further silo your information to Facebook. Consider Facebook's comments widget for example. Yes there is clear value for the publisher, but your theory starts to fall apart on the other end of the spectrum: Facebook gets to silo all these comments and call them their own. The same principal extends to likes and worse yet, user accounts. Facebook encouraging publishers to user their profiles, comments, likes, friends, etc. takes all of this data out of the publishers hands. Imho, this is not embracing the open web by any standards.

timdellinger 16y ago

As much as I agree with the overall premise (Facebook won't be king of the mountain forever), I'm still a bit unsure about what the driving force will be for users to go from Facebook to "open" alternatives. The driving force for leaving AOL was clear: there's a big, exciting internet out there that's more interesting and innovative than AOL chatrooms and AOL keywords, and the user base was also getting a little more comfortable with computers and didn't need AOL to hold it's hand so much any more. I don't see a similar driving force for leaving Facebook. As a matter of fact, Facebook is embracing innovation, pre-emptively embracing whatever things might give users a reason to jump ship.

jaxn 16y ago
Also, it would be foolish to think that Facebook isn't also aware of this analogy. I am certain they are looking at how AOL lost their stronghold and working to correct those mistakes. That is likely the driving force behind FB's willingness to participate in the open web (on their terms).
- imaginator 16y ago
  I'm sure they are aware of the analogy, but they are also enjoying the Goldman Sachs sponsored money-go-round and will eventually need to step off.
bobz 16y ago
I'm not sure the comparison is so precise that the outcome is predicted. There's no sure bet that Facebook will go the way of AOL. I like this comparison more as a mitigating factor to closed-web alarmism. This is not the first time the open web has felt itself under attack. And if a big player DOES make moves to try to get in between the free flow of information we all know and love, there are historical examples of the free web fighting back, and winning! I don't use Facebook, but I don't think it's evil... yet. But it's shown some scary tendencies. It's nice to know we've seen a company abuse it's massively dominant market share, and pay.
phlux 16y ago
I agree with you, and came ere to say what you have -- however I can name a few reasons why FB users will leave/choose to be non-participants. (Disclaimer, I do not have, nor shall I ever have a FB account) Lets assume that in the next few years FB userbase doubles. 20% of the population of the planet has an account. The amount of data held on those users is immense, and as such, of keen interest to the corporate oligopoly that is government -- There is a very good incentive alone to not have an account on FB. I am sure there will be a not-insignificant number of people whose ability to get jobs/keep jobs will be inhibited by FB. I also can imagine FB fueling interest in even more privacy as well - and groups of people with a personal desire to have absolutely ZERO information about them online will be a small but real niche in the populous.

taylorwc 16y ago

I agree with the sentiment in general, but I don't think the analogy is as solid as the author portrays. Facebook and Twitter, unlike AOL, have not only embraced, but in many ways encouraged other apps and social communities to be built around them, leverage their APIs, and have tried to be a unifying hub of activity, rather than the SOLE destination for their users.

T_S_ 16y ago

Add new entities, add new relations between them. The "social" in the network starts to fade and it simply becomes the network we use to get what we want. Facebook has a nice beachhead, but that does not mean the game is over.

rythie 16y ago

I hope we'll end up with something open, but I have my doubts. There are still many closed systems that indicate that it may not happen: * Apple released their closed Mac Store today after 25+ years of a open system, to add to their many closed systems. Apple have shown several times they will block apps. they don't like. * We've had 35+ years of games consoles, on which the games are tightly controlled by the supplier of the console. Microsoft have already indicated they will not allow certain types of games in to use Kinect. * 100+ years after the invention of the Telephone we have Skype, which is controlled by a single company. * Whilst Email is open. Microsoft, Google or Yahoo control so much of the market they can and do effectively stop you talking to your customers by marking your mails as spam and making it hard to appeal (e.g. previous spammer on your IP)

pyre 16y ago
> * 100+ years after the invention of the Telephone > we have Skype, which is controlled by a single company. Bad example. See Ma Ball ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System ).
- rythie 16y ago
  Good point, I was just thinking about global monopolies. BT of course did a similar thing in the U.K.

EGreg 16y ago

Yes, this is very true. See http://myownstream.com/blog#2010-05-21 http://myownstream.com/blog#2010-05-21 ;-)

RobPfeifer 16y ago

Open doesn't always win - check out Tim Wu's book the Master Switch. It traces the history of telephone, TV, radio, film (and the Internet, though I haven't gotten there yet). Theodore Vail and AT&T essentially created a massive closed network and David Sarnoff at RCA/NBC did the same with radio & television. They eventually lost their grip on their monopolies, but the government was involved in both. While this isn't a perfect analogy, the imperialist nature of their founders sounds familiar :) One interesting question: If Facebook and Twitter are NBC and CBS, who will be the cable provider for social networking?

torpy 16y ago
From the looks of things: Comcast et al.
wladimir 16y ago
That's very USA-centered though. Usually, something was open in some countries and closed in others, depending on legislation in that country. Closed systems of global scale are a pretty new thing, and it's not clear how this will play out.

dshjtykyu 16y ago

●---------------------------------------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●------ http://goo.gl/l5v0b http://goo.gl/l5v0b ------● ●---------------------------------------●

jasonkester 16y ago

That metaphor just doesn't work. AOL was a walled garden that survived first by convincing people that there was no real Internet outside of it, and then by trying to pretend that the "Internet" was just a part of AOL. Eventually, people caught on that there was in fact this giant Internet out there all by itself, and AOL wasn't technically required to access it. So people left. Facebook, however, is the entire Facebook. There is no giant social entity outside of it that people are being kept away from. It's an end product. So sure, somebody may make a bigger, better one. But they're not going to suddenly remove the blindfold and expose Facebook users to the Truth, because it's just plain not out there.