wanderingstan

TechCrunch is asking Could Facebook Become The Next Microsoft?. This echoes the thoughts of myself and others from a month ago.

But since then I’ve been wondering: Where are the Facebook stars?

Only your direct friends and members of your “networks” can see the content you create. Only these people can pay attention to what you do in Facebook.

As a result:

• There are no bands giving out their Facebook URLs like they do for MySpace.
• There are no products in Facebook that you can “befriend”.
• There are no movie stars in Facebook that you can follow.
• There are no popular bloggers in Facebook that everyone reads.
• There are no stars in Facebook.

Even though I would like to open my profile to visible by anyone, this is simply not possible. Here are the three settings available for my profile:

There is no way to get rich in Facebook’s attention economy.

One datapoint: My friend Fabian in Germany says that he’s tried Facebook but gets quickly bored because he can’t see any profiles. The German Facebook clone Studivz.com defaults all profiles to being publicly viewable. (They also have a built-in MyBlogLog-esque feature where you can see who has been viewing your profile.)

Bottom line: Attention is the new wealth, but in Facebook everyone has a glass ceiling.

Related:

Facebook is using their social network information to optimize search results for users. This is exciting stuff! It is the third phase of internet search, much like we are building here at Lijit. What is this “third phase”?

I wrote a post detailing the 3 phases back in 2005 as a grad student. This graphic sums it up:

(Note the funny disclaimer at the end explaining why I couldn’t build it myself at that time. Now I’ve got a company and an incredible team helping me make that a reality. How cool is that?!)

Facebook doing true social network search. (as opposed to social democracy like Swicki or 2005-era Wink) This was explained, with impressive stats, by a post today on Facebook’s blog today.

Facebook search results are sorted by an approximation of social graph distance. People closer to you in the graph—your friends and people in your networks—are likely to be more relevant to you and thus are ranked higher. We also use this concept of “social proximity” to order results within applications like groups and events.

How does this compare to Lijit? Most importantly, we operate in the “wild and free” web. The data is not nearly so structured out here. Network relationships are overlap and can even contradict: MyBlogLog, LinkedIn, Blogrolls and more.

But on the other hand, we find data everywhere. The web is a big place, and the stuff you’re looking for probably isn’t always in Facebook!

On the heels of Facebook’s API: The unofficial Facebook blog is reporting that LinkedIn may open their platform. Seth Goldstein is reporting rumors that MySpace may open theirs:

While I don’t have fresh data on hand to support this hunch, the well-sourced rumor I heard last week about MySpace scrambling feverishly to open their API’s reinforces what is becoming obvious: MySpace’s Kremlin-esque behavior towards 3rd party widget developers -”we buy them or we crush them!”- is on a crash course with the debauched dirty-dancing going on amidst the MySpace spring-breakers.

This is exciting news!

As a hacker, it is exciting to imagine the mash-up possibilities.

As an idealist, it is exciting to see that the silos may be cracking.

As a Lijit founder, it is exciting that more content from individuals can be rolled into their personal search engine.

Here’s hoping the rumors are true!

[Silo photo by Ixio]

Could Facebook be the next Microsoft? Someone has to be the social network operating system.

In the early 90′s the computer world was chaos. There were a zillion formats floating around for everything: spreadsheets, printer interfaces, modems, floppies, displays, faxes, you name it.

Then Microsoft came and dominated everyone into submission. Now your product only had to work with Microsoft and your company could make millions. Thousands of programmers learned to work with the Windows API.

Sometimes a conquerer is needed to bring unification. Pax Romana and such. They say the trains ran on time under Mussolini. (Or not.)

Nowadays the problems of printer interfaces and faxes are pretty much solved. The windows API has been eclipsed by the web. And on the web, social networks are a huge force, accounting for nearly 7% of all internet traffic and rising.

But so far it’s been chaos, with people migrating from network to network, and no interoperability between them.

With their 25 million user base, and an openness to letting 3rd parties make money on their platform, Facebook is positioned to be the Microsoft of social networks.

Still, there are many ways that Facebook could fail.

The questions now are: (1) Is social networking mature enough that it would matter? (2) Will Facebook maintain their lead in innovation and openness?

Back in January I predicted that the blogosphere would be the next MySpace. The amount of freedom and innovation in the “wild widget web” will be ultimately more compelling.

So it’s interesting to see Facebook release a powerful development platform for external developers. This is a very smart move for them, and a smart way to leverage their position as gatekeeper to their millions of users.

As Josh points out, this is tantamount to an extra $250 million R&D budget for Facebook. But Scott Heiferman warns of parallels to Prodigy and AOL.

This is a smarter move than what AOL and Prodigy did 10 years ago.

What site will be the next MySpace or FaceBook? I think the answer is already here.

To justify my case, we’ll have to take a trip back in time.

In the late 80′s and 90′s being “online” meant getting stuff with your modem. So most people signed up with a service like CompuServe, Prodigy, or AOL. They had email, news, shopping, forums, search, and more. Of course, the internet was there too, and it could do many of the same things, but only a few brave souls outside of academia could conquer the steep learning curve of Unix commands and arcane networking configuration needed to accomplish the most basic tasks. (Remember ‘talk’, ‘pine’, ‘nn’, and ‘gopher’?)

But the internet was free and open, and it got better as the nerds kept creating. They made easy to use email clients that weren’t restricted to people on the same network. They made things with names like “Yahoo!” and “eBay”. They made ugly (but strangely compelling) home pages and fan pages. Publishers could set up shot on the internet without cutting expensive deals. Soon the Web had better features, more content, and fewer restrictions. The proprietary services started to cave: In 1994 Prodigy offered their members access to the web, CompuServe followed in 1995, AOL in 1996.

Fast forward 10 years.

Being “online” today means being generating content and being part of a social network. So most people sign up with a service like MySpace or Facebook or LinkedIn. They have friend lists, photo sharing, messaging, blogs, groups, music and more. Of course, there are independent blogs too, and they can do many of the same things, but only a few brave souls conquer the steep learning curve of setting up a blogging platform or configuring javascript widget code.

But the blogosphere is free and open, and it’s getting better as the nerds keep creating. They’ve created easier to use platforms like WordPress and Typepad, and widget platforms like WidgetBox. They’ve made photo sharing widgets (Flickr), video sharing widgets (Revver, YouTube), Blogroll widgets (Bloglines, Blogrolling), and more keep coming every day. The proprietary services have already been forced to let some widgets in, and the widget nerds are innovating faster than the them. (Including my own company, Lijit.)

I’m not a one prone to making new years predictions, but I predict that MySpace will be as influencial in 2017 as Prodigy is today in 2007. (And probably a lot sooner!)

You may not have heard about it, but the German social networking site Studivz.com is making big news, mostly in that it may be acquired by Facebook. What makes it interesting is that Studivz is basically a exact clone of Facebook. The only difference is that it is red and in German.

An interesting business model: Copy an successful business in a different market, then position yourself to be acquired when the original business wants to move into your market.

Is it time for users to unionize?

I was talking with my friend Fabian shortly after the recent social revolt at FaceBook and we hit upon an amazing parallel. Consider this:

In the early days of the money economy, workers were horribly exploited. During the industrial revolution conditions got bad enough that users began to form unions and fight back for their rights.

Goldhaber now suggests that we are leaving the money economy and entering the attention economy. So are we, the content-creating workers, also being exploited? What else do you call it when web companies are built entirely on user-generated content, but we users are stripped of our rights to that content by onerous EULAs and forced to endure increasingly annoying advertisements? All the while trapped in walled gardens which we’ve been locked into, and the gardeners only listen when we scream.

Every MySpace user I know is absolutely sick of the advertising onslaught and would leave if they could. But they feel trapped because they have so much content invested there, not to mention all their friends.

Could the same techniques that brought down the robber barons also break down the walled gardens of  today’s social media sites? Is it time for unions of users?

In the last weeks I’ve run the idea by many folks from Boulder to San Francisco to New York to Frankfurt. Everyone gets it immediately. Several people are already moving forward with this idea and I look forward to seeing how things play out. I’ll keep you posted.