Re: FaceBook taking over the web, and semantic web

On 2010-05-09, adasal wrote:

> Readers of this thread might be interested in this article in Wired: 
> Facebookÿÿs Gone Rogue; Itÿÿs Time for an Open Alternative 
> http://bit.ly/aHWMuI

The last time I looked, your uncle Ronald was hooked on CNN. Now he's 
perhaps hooked on Facebook -- or perhaps Youtube, since he likes 
pictorial concent more. Most likely he's still hooked on Girls Gone 
Wild, though, with trivial competition from Facebook or even Google 
(besides searching for same and getting the ads just right). Come next 
year, he'll be hooked on something else, but he certainly can't be owned 
by any single presence on the net/web.

To me Facebook's Like-buttons work well. I'm also of the highly sharing 
kind, so I don't think they could violate my privacy even if they wanted 
to. They really don't have half the data I've already divulged online. I 
just invited my boss into my Facebook network, despite the fact that my 
perv friends' updates would then often be seen by him. Yet I'm having no 
online problem at all.

I really don't think Facebook's problem is with privacy, or ownership. 
In the online circuit, you simply do not have the kind of control you 
would have expected in the old days. Rather it's about overblown hype 
wrt semantic technology. They're throwing it around as a marketing 
gimmick, but at least as of yet, they do not seem to be too serious 
about it. In particular, they do not seem to be integrating much -- 
which is then *the* thing with semantic technology: going along with 
others and mutually benefiting from shared understanding of machine 
processable fact.

So I sort of think that either Facebook has to change its attitude 
towards semantic tech, or the next competitor who does better will kill 
it. That's always been the name of the online game, and I really don't 
see how Facebook, even with its large-nation-size user base, is above 
that. Even Google has never been, and Facebook, well, it's already 
caught at least thousands of high value negative editorials simply by 
changing a couple of check boxes. That already put it into a clear 
retreat, and not just disrepute, so there you have, the online state 
of the game...
-- 
Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - decoy@iki.fi, http://decoy.iki.fi/front
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