Eating Crow and Drinking (the Facebook) Kool-Aid
Confession: Here are a few things I’ve said about Facebook on this very blog…
I’ve even signed up. Like, less than a month ago. And let me tell you what—I pretty much have no idea why I should use it. It really is just a collection of the same activities that I do elsewhere. I mean, as a blogger, do I need Facebook?
Facebook, of course, doesn’t have an open RSS feed that i know of. They force you to visit the site. To me, that completely blows and is the #1 reason I’ll probably never use it extensively.
About all it is good for is the groups features (which I don’t even use because there is no RSS… so maybe it’s not all that good).
Then there’s OpenID and portable social networks (via Oberkirch). Once these reach their enormous potential, what really is the purpose of Facebook or MySpace?
As of now, I can only envision using it if it somehow crushes LinkedIn and becomes the #1 site for business networking.
Oh wait, what was that last one? Maybe I was on to something. For some reason, I’m using Facebook much more than I’m using LinkedIn now. In fact, when was the last time I signed into LinkedIn?
Why the change? LinkedIn allows me to connect with people. But I feel it just stops there. I can go back and check people’s resumes, but that’s really it. I’m starting to think LinkedIn is going to go down as one mammoth missed opportunity. I have 80 connections in LinkedIn. There is a lot of opportunity for information there. But all I get is a list of people that added new connections and the occasional job change.
I downplayed Facebook because everything I could possibly post to it was available already in a link from my blog, be it Twitter updates, last.fm charts, or what have you. Commenter (and former Aptima colleague) Nick Caler pointed out:
Adam, you actually gave the reason Facebook is so popular in your post. Its popular because everything is there, and more is being added through its platform api every day. Its a one stop look at the goings on on a person many differing sites. Where else can one see what your current music choices are and the pictures you’ve taken and find out what you are up to and see the people you know.
My response to that last question was “my blog”. But what Nick should have asked me:
Where else can one see what everyone else’s current music choices are and the pictures they’ve taken and find out what they are up to and see the people they know.
That’s where the value is. And I didn’t see that connection early on.
That said, just about every Facebook app I’ve seen is complete crap. But I’ve seen a couple that are beginning to shed light on what Zuck & Co. may have here. I’m a user now—and a fan—so I’ll be watching closely.