Friday, September 24, 2010

Facebook is a cancer on the Internet

Facebook's downtime was an interesting event in social networking history. Rather than the Twitter fail whale which really poses little impact, the amount of integration and reliance on Facebook and it's many tentacles brought down a large proportion of social networking functionality. And that's the problem. We've started to put all our little eggs into one basket and once the basket breaks so do the eggs, every single one of them. Facebook has become almost like a cancer on the internet, invasive and hard to kill off without doing serious damage.

There's no such thing as privacy in a social world either. With so much integration every byte of your information is cross-pollenated to a myriad of networks you've signed up for. I mean, look at LinkedIn now, it used to be a bona-fide professional network and now is little more than a Facebook clone for suits. Seriously, do you really want people to know exactly where you are at every moment in time when you post something ? I'm really at a loss over Foursquare and their ilk, what's the attraction here ?

Something of humanity is being lost in all of this instant, 140 characterless noise we're generating. I think humans are losing the ability to communicate.

Mark my words, the social scene will implode; maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but it will. What will Pete Cashmore write about then I wonder ?..........
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4 comments:

  1. AnonymousSeptember 25, 2010 at 2:03 AM

    100% agree. If the downtime was enough a shake for even a microscopic few of FB dwellers, the world today is a better place.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousSeptember 25, 2010 at 2:39 AM

    I think Facebook is a great concept, but Zuckerberg is so focused on developing platforms to lock people in so he can make money that he's sort of missed what the social core of the site should be. It's about finding and communicating with friends. Stuff like location based check-ins shouldn't be the core of the concept.

    Also, I think calling Facebook the "cancer" of the internet is a little harsh. Between 4chan, DirtyPhoneBook, and that crappy uncreative company that makes Farmville, there's a whole lot of things that are a lot worse online.

    Facebook can be a really great site for connecting with people, and I hope their management focuses on that instead of trying to become a 100 billion dollar company.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Steve GiovannettiSeptember 27, 2010 at 10:56 PM

    Funny post but I'm not sure we should fear any one company. Facebook is no more a cancer than Google News or Twitter. I would be more concerned over the cumulative choices we make about how we use the Internet.
    I use Facebook but I had no idea it was down. I could loose any of the services I leverage for 24 hours or more in some cases and it wouldn't wreck my day. It would be a problem if I lost the Internet entirely as a method of communication or expression. Luckily there are multiple channels of expression and communication.
    Put down the keyboard and stop worrying about Facebook. Go see a movie, maybe "The Social Network", it's getting great reviews.

    ReplyDelete
  4. IGnatius T FoobarApril 19, 2012 at 2:31 PM

    Facebook is absolutely a cancer on the Internet. It should be treated as such.

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