Thursday, October 04, 2007

Facebook Part of Retro Web 2.0

So Steve Ballmer is discounting Facebook as a fad that fickle young people will flee as fast as the first flocked to it, according to Adotas. So is Steve being honest, or just trying to soften the investment market so that in a few months Microsoft can get a bargain? Although Ballmer is brazen enough to air his feelings in the media, this reminds me of the Whole Foods CEO who was anonymously ragging on Wild Oats online in the months leading up to acquiring the company.

I've been skeptical of Facebook's long term prospects as well, although it looks like a billion dollar payout is still possible.

Sly Steve was right in comparing Facebook to Geocities, which was the Facebook of a decade ago. Although the tools are more polished today and the words "social networking" have replaced "community," check out the similar wording in Yahoo's press
release from 1999, when many of Facebook's regulars were still pre-puberty.

"With more than 3.5 million sites authored and hosted on GeoCities, the company has built one of the Web's largest communities"... "the easy-to-use and innovative publishing tools... allow non-technical users to instantly create, publish and update content on the Web." Sounds a tad like Facebook and MySpace, eh?

This is just one example of "new" tools and sites that are retreads of what helped to fuel Bubble 1.0. Podcasts were called MP3 downloads, and rich media RSS feeds were called "push" technology, NetFlix was Kozmo, and Amazon Fresh was called Peapod.

To quote David Byrne -- Same as it ever was.

Posted By John Gartner at 10:27 AM
Permanent Link: Facebook Part of Retro Web 2.0 | Comments (2)

(2) Comments on Facebook Part of Retro Web 2.0

I would hardly call facebook a retread of GeoCities. If you used facebook to any extent; you would see the value of the networks and social graph and how communication is radically changed to a more efficient mode.

Not to mention the platform on which over 5000 applications have been developed. More details on Ballmers comments here:

http://facereviews.com/2007/10/02/microsofts-ballmer-does-not-grasp-facebook

Cheers!
Rodney Rumford

Comments by rodney rumford : Thursday, October 04, 2007 at 01:22 PM

Geocities was a growing community, much more of a community that many of the web 2.0 properties that we have today.

But do you know the time frame of events leading to it's decline?

Piracy and porn where always a problem on Geocities (think of the Youtube problems w/stolen videos, but less cash to work on the problem or deal with regulators).

In order to monetize Geocities, they started putting ads everywhere. For some this was OK as you could opt out. Then you couldn't opt out. Then every image and HTML file on your pages were watermarked by Geocities. Then you had to have banner ads from Geocities... it was a never ending escalation of Geocities ads, water marks, javascript inclusions, and other annoyances that made it less than hospitable to stay with Geocities.

Eventually Yahoo bought them and killed just about all of the Geocities account unless you chose to pay for their hosting service.

So... after several years of escalating adverts, watermarks, etc. then having most sites killed off by the new owners... I'd say the comparison isn't real valid.

Comments by Scott : Thursday, October 04, 2007 at 03:42 PM

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