Sunday, May 16, 2010
CLOSED INTO ITSELF
More about Facebook. This time about its retrogressive character and lack of open access.
World’s Largest Social Network: The Open Web
in which the reporters point out that the World Wide Web is the social network and that Facebook is a poor encapsulation of it.
Facebook users remind me of the people who used to belong to CompuServe and AOL. Even I once belonged to Compuserve.
We were fed a predigested diet of news and other bits of the web in a kind of safe form so that we didn't have to venture out in the cold clear air of the web itself.
Sooner or later most of us got the picture and took the leap into faith and space and gave up our "memberships", a nice word for cash flow. It took me months to sever the account and then only with the aid of American Express.
Now, Facebook is looking inward and holding on to its members by offering games and limited internet access. No wonder it is mostly teenagers and people who have been "afraid" of the 'net.
As I have been pointing out, they have something else to be afraid of as Facebook mines their personal data and steals their friends.
