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The Future of Facebook

This is an interesting project (link) and it is good to see that it is kickstarted.

The opening video is quite well structured, starting from positive feedback and moving to negative.  I have taken a snapshot of the video at a screen which presages the five areas that will be covered.


There is no doubt that Facebook is (1) a valuable service, and (2) has raised some hackles due to their ownership of users data.

The area from above that most interests me is the "society" sphere, and what a student at Stanford (from the mobisocial lab...sorry, I don't have an exact name) calls the "circle of like."  Facebook provides great value today to users and to websites, and has created a virtuous circle where clicking "like" drives more traffic to Facebook, and more data / information / knowledge to websites.  I highlight this as the circle reinforces two strong user bases, so displacing Facebook is probably harder than even Google imagines.

The main question is: Can Facebook continue to wall-garden personal information, or will doing so create a critical mass of back-lash that ultimately topples them (and gives Google, or someone else, an opening)?   It seems to me that this question is similar to the one Skype faces.  Both have 500M users, and have proprietary systems that encourage walled garden behavior.   Obviously, the scrutiny on Facebook is much higher than on Skype, but both face a similar quandary:  Is the user base loyal and ultimately, more important than the walled garden?  

For Skype, would supporting industry standards top to bottom be a good thing now?  Would users be happier, and more likely to be loyal?  How important is loyalty vs growth when you have a huge user base?

For Facebook, will the current tide of "unease" grow, or is it a short term effect that will simply simmer (but not boil over) due to the value of the Facebook offering?  The current "tide of unease" is something that I sense, rather than have any specific data points around. 

Or, maybe, as rumor has it, the two will join forces?  IMHO that would be a mistake for Facebook.  It would be much more important to focus on search, which creates further virtuous circles, than to invest in voice, which reinforces existing ones.

Regardless, I am looking forward to the analysis of the future-of-facebook.  The team that has been assembled will certainly have opinions to share.

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