It has been two days of indulgences: Facebook is taking over the Internet, Facebook will be bigger than Google, Like buttons for everyone, Facebook this and Facebook that. All the blogs and Twitter streams are spilling over with news about F8 and the big announcements. I cannot possibly consume anymore. I am cutting myself off before it is too late.
We drink because we love the taste
F8 gave us all we could handle. When Facebook creator Marc Zuckerberg took the stage there were tens of thousands of geeks sitting around their computer screens watching the Livestream feed intently, looking for an angle, trying to make sense of the new changes and thinking of how to leverage them faster than the next guy. It's been several years since my last keg stand, but what is happening right now in communication and information is intoxicating. However, like any indulgence there is always a hangover after all the fun and excitement is over. The last two days were like a party where everyone got caught up in the excitement of F8 and now its time to look back and ask, "What just happened?"
Everyone loves a good story
Yesterday, the day after Zuckerberg changed the Internet forever, the "gurus" were praising the upcoming changes. Check the headlines:
Pete Cashmore of Mashable on CNN.com: How Facebook won the web
Newsweeks Tectonic Shifts blog: Facebook's Play to Take Over the Entire Internet
TechCrunch: I Think Facebook Just Seized Control Of The Internet
The Hangover
If we believe all the affirmations above - that Facebook has indeed won, seized, or taken over the Internet, then what does this mean? It means the intoxicating feeling is going to give way to a headache, regrets, and a lot of questions. So here are a few things to think about as you sober up.
Privacy is the biggest thing we will give up if Facebook has indeed "won". No longer will the Internet be a place where anonymity is king. The plan is to connect all of us to everything we say, read, view, share, or connect with on the Internet. My days of barking at Duke fans on ESPN.com message boards behind the alias LAETTNERHATER are over. The era of Internet Accountability is now upon us and it was all ushered in under the cloak of a like button. That little button will now report back to your Facebook Profile everything you do. Feeling nauseous yet?
Now that the party is over, who are your real friends? That is something that is going to matter more than ever as over-sharing will become the biggest problem on Facebook. Do you really want to see what some random online acquaintance read on NYTIMES.com when you arrive? Or even worse do you want to find out that your inner-circle has been "liking" the hell out of shows on the CW. The horror! We are about to be hit with an abundance of information. This is going to be unwelcome noise in a world of constant chatter.
Who didn't get invited to the party? There is always someone on the outside looking in and most of the time this is someone that everyone knows and even spends time with, but they just don't have it anymore. In this case that person is Twitter. They are going to be the big loser in this paradigm shift. The ecosystem of developers and the apps they create will start to dry up. Developers live for two things: data and exposure. Before Facebook launched the open graph developers had to choose between a party with a lot of data and a party with a lot of people. Now Facebook can provide both and in doing so will steal the mechanism that allowed Twitter to catapult to 100,000,000 users. Even with all those users, last call might come sooner than expected for Twitter unless they react quickly (and with something amazing).
Lesson learned
OK, so we all got wasted off the next big thing, felt some things that confused us, and we are now trying to make sure we did not just commit to some awkward future. A future where everything we do is captured and then broadcasted to everyone we are connected to via Facebook. I know we all feel a little weird, but lets think this one through. I will put on the coffee.