Commentary
Facebook, This Is Your Chance To Make Me Look Stupid
- by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, October 13, 2010
I read through the press coverage for last week's big announcements regarding Facebook Groups and the new ability to port my personal data to other platforms, but somewhere along the way I missed the point. I don't see why journalists had to drive down or fly over or go visit the Facebook offices for a series of seemingly "ho-hum" announcements.
When press people are asked to go see Apple, they get cool new gadgets announced, or new operating systems. When Google calls the press to its home, it's for new products being released or new technology that consumers can get excited over. For Facebook to call a meeting and tell the world they're playing nice with others and allowing users to create Groups (which feels like Lists but is open to others) just doesn't seem to carry that much weight in my book. Maybe I'm wrong (it has happened before).
advertisement
advertisement
I understand that companies can now create more targeted groups of users to select and share messaging with. It's the equivalent of a Facebook VIP badge for a brand, but companies can do that with their CRM efforts already, so this doesn't feel mind-blowingly awesome to me.
It feels like Facebook is making an attempt not to be considered the "Rainman" of its day (for all of you familiar with the old-school publishing platform that AOL used back when it was a different beast than the open platform we know and love today). It doesn't want to be a closed network, though it does want to be the hub of all networks. It's Facebook's version of open-sourcing your data -- with your permission, of course.If company strategists had tried to make this announcement one year ago, the privacy and permission component might have been different -- but they've learned their lessons and have integrated that knowledge here.
So once again I ask, what's the big deal? Facebook is too large to be surpassed by a competitor at this point, barring some very unfortunate outage that takes them offline for a month. A worm-type virus that scares all users away from their daily news feed rituals could have an impact, but otherwise it would be hard to say that a user porting his data over to some other social platform is much of a threat, because Facebook is still the central location of that data -- and once it's been ported, it can become outdated. That data has to maintain a component of recency for it to be truly valuable, and recency comes from the amount of daily traffic that Facebook generates for each of its gazillions of users.
Of course, the one thing missing in this discussion is Microsoft. Is Microsoft going to get involved in this data-porting scenario? Microsoft has been eerily quiet over the last 12 months since making its investment in Facebook. What is it planning to do with that data, and are Microsoft and Facebook finding ways to get more integrated into the PC desktop? Could Apple be far behind in trying to find ways to integrate Facebook directly into their operating system as well? I'm pretty sure we won't see any Android/Facebook integration any time soon, but once again I could be wrong!
So this is the chance for Facebook to make me look stupid and prove me wrong. Tell me what is so important about this news and provide me with a real-world, average-Joe example of what this benefit is to me, the user.
I'm also really looking forward to your responses. Maybe you can prove me wrong and help me figure out what's the big deal?
I have to agree. Data portability is about as important to the average user as knowing the torque of their car. Interesting to some, admired by others, but makes no difference in your daily life.
Let's let Facebook have its moment. They stepped in it with privacy. That was an industry hullabaloo (but honestly, it was WAY overblown for the response of the 500 million Facebook users...how many left? Jason Calacanis said he was leaving...and he didn't, so that makes zero that left for privacy reasons). Facebook is doing what it can to respect the privacy of its users and trying to make the open graph useful to individuals. They are trying to rectify past sins. But we should be clear, Facebook didn't do data portability for users, they did it for us...they did it for the industry. They did it so that we would stop complaining about them.
So, let them have their moment. They made a gesture. They made a statement. It will not change Facebook's march to 600 million. Nor will it stop them from using the open graph to make a big fantastic pile of money.
And, as much as I hate to be a Facebook apologist, good for them. They have created a compelling, engaging, addicting service. And people freely trade personal details for the increased ability to engage with those close to them. Let them straddle the line between trying to do the right thing and making money hand over fist. This kind of step shows that Facebook cares about what we say, and it cares about its user base. (It cares about revenue, too, but let's see what they can do about managing both mountains of money and mountains of happy users.)
One problem some websites have in getting the best value from their on-site inventory/emails is getting users to pay the (personal time) cost of registering and providing demographic data.
If Facebook can lower this barrier to registration and provide rich demographic detail this can be valuable to websites financially. Yes, you can do this through CMSs and your internal systems, but the more data you collect the fewer users are willing to give it. Getting this data from Facebook with minimal effort by users means more users providing more data.
So not groundbreakingly cool, but perhaps a way publishers can improve their bottom line?
No worries, Facebook won't make you look stupid. But I think Apple's closed world is closer to the Rainman scenario. Damn building in that code was a bear.