What Facebook SHOULD do
Sarah Perez posted a great post of all these coolio things one SHOULD be able to do on Facebook. Sarah got it right - almost.
So in the spirit of “Let’s just blog it” - heres what I think Facebook should do.
NOTE: This is really in preparation for a promised meeting with Dave Morin. So YO! Dave - this is for you.
1. Do everything Sarah says - but instead of doing it INSIDE of Facebook - allow users to pick and choose external servcies which do the same thing. Except just not inside of Facebook. In other words - make Facebook a dashboard onto your digital lifestyle, and do NOT lock users into specific applications, web servcies and funtionality. Make the entire thing - plug-n-play.
2. Get dynamic privacy to work - correctly. Nuf said. Cause if you don’t, someone else - will. You sure as hell BETTER start offering opt in controls and allow members to control WHO gets to export their data - versus juts being friends with them. Granular levels of relationships would be nice - as well.
3. Continue to evolve Facebook ads and give Google a run for the money. Take social info and turn it into money. Empower end-users to make money - too. Help us monetize our attention.
4. Get Zuckerberg and the major execs t start BLOGGING! Have a conversation or two, instead of acting all elitist and smug!
5. Do everything Dave McClure is ranting about. Dave is pitching that email is the great cross-platform equalizer. A form of normalized interaction. BTW Here’s a reposted article by Dave, which ‘tagged’ a few of us - to the article. This kind of stuff is totally coolio - and a reason Facebook is clearly my favorite social network right now:
6. Set up an effective way to deal with appeals with people who have been banned. Irina Slutsky comes to mind. My friend Kelli Fox is still waiting for an answer.
7. Go public and once and for all squash all the acquisition rumors.
8. Open Source the platform and license it to others - round the world. Create a unique blend and balancing of freedom, cloud services and targeted ad network. The folks in Singapore and Dubai don’t mind you coming into town as a carpetbagger - but quite frankly - that’s never gonna cut it. READ: opportunity here!
CLOSING NOTE: I certainly don’t have to tell anyone that interest in controlling one’s data and this whole debate is growing. My trackbacks are growing and my RSS reader is full of all sorts of evidence that our message is resonating. Just like we knew some platform had to open up (Facebook went 98% of the way) and that that would cause others to open up (OpenSocial, MySpace, Microsoft, Bebo, LinkedIn) - so TOO can we be assured that our data will be freed!
That’s why I posted “what dynamic privacy SHOULD be” - and that’s why I’m meeting with Dave Morin ASAP and why I created this post. To be clear and to give these platforms the chance to ‘do the right thing’. However if Michael Arrington is snickering and says that I’m compromising, just cause I’m being nice - well then he doesn’t know who I am and what I’m all about.
But that’s OK - he’s free to be wrong, just as Facebook is wrong. And Google. Only until we’re in Nirvana can everything be right. Until then we still got work to do.
thanks marc. i never had much interest in all the “blah blah” of social networks, i just used them. nothing “bad” ever happened to me. (well, except for when my cousin young Victor drew a penis on my face on Friendster in 2004, but I knew it was him and he went in my cache and got my password, doh) — but even after having my account restored, i’m STILL not allowed to know what it was i did that was so horrible and a question of national security.
thanks marc. i never had much interest in all the “blah blah” of social networks, i just used them. nothing “bad” ever happened to me. (well, except for when my cousin young Victor drew a penis on my face on Friendster in 2004, but I knew it was him and he went in my cache and got my password, doh) — but even after having my account restored, i’m STILL not allowed to know what it was i did that was so horrible and a question of national security.
thanks marc. i never had much interest in all the “blah blah” of social networks, i just used them. nothing “bad” ever happened to me. (well, except for when my cousin young Victor drew a penis on my face on Friendster in 2004, but I knew it was him and he went in my cache and got my password, doh) — but even after having my account restored, i’m STILL not allowed to know what it was i did that was so horrible and a question of national security.
marc, i may not always agree with you, but at least on this point we’re in sync: having data profile & friend list access on the Wide Open Web is gonna be awesome.
and i really think the most amazing stuff Facebook (& Google, & MySpace, & everyone else) is going to happen OFF their platforms, and by combining all those services for small website owners to use easily. the experience is very similar to what PayPal did for small merchants (using hosted services & secure payments to help enable credit card payments for a large audience of small sellers who didn’t previously have that capability).
regardless of who ‘wins’ (i think all of the big players will do fine), the real winner in all of this is the small website owner, and the users. and that’s going to be a wonderful thing
marc, i may not always agree with you, but at least on this point we’re in sync: having data profile & friend list access on the Wide Open Web is gonna be awesome.
and i really think the most amazing stuff Facebook (& Google, & MySpace, & everyone else) is going to happen OFF their platforms, and by combining all those services for small website owners to use easily. the experience is very similar to what PayPal did for small merchants (using hosted services & secure payments to help enable credit card payments for a large audience of small sellers who didn’t previously have that capability).
regardless of who ‘wins’ (i think all of the big players will do fine), the real winner in all of this is the small website owner, and the users. and that’s going to be a wonderful thing
marc, i may not always agree with you, but at least on this point we’re in sync: having data profile & friend list access on the Wide Open Web is gonna be awesome.
and i really think the most amazing stuff Facebook (& Google, & MySpace, & everyone else) is going to happen OFF their platforms, and by combining all those services for small website owners to use easily. the experience is very similar to what PayPal did for small merchants (using hosted services & secure payments to help enable credit card payments for a large audience of small sellers who didn’t previously have that capability).
regardless of who ‘wins’ (i think all of the big players will do fine), the real winner in all of this is the small website owner, and the users. and that’s going to be a wonderful thing
We offer a service that lets users build their own social networks and just launched a widget called “Livecommunity” that allows you to take our communities to other sites. No matter what will happen with friend connect, facebook and myspace, we will aim to integrate all these services seamlessly into our product. We are also working on read/write APIs for our software. If the big ones don’t get it, the small ones just have to push them because we can act way faster
We offer a service that lets users build their own social networks and just launched a widget called “Livecommunity” that allows you to take our communities to other sites. No matter what will happen with friend connect, facebook and myspace, we will aim to integrate all these services seamlessly into our product. We are also working on read/write APIs for our software. If the big ones don’t get it, the small ones just have to push them because we can act way faster
We offer a service that lets users build their own social networks and just launched a widget called “Livecommunity” that allows you to take our communities to other sites. No matter what will happen with friend connect, facebook and myspace, we will aim to integrate all these services seamlessly into our product. We are also working on read/write APIs for our software. If the big ones don’t get it, the small ones just have to push them because we can act way faster