World Domination. We like.

April 24th, 2010 • Business, Social, Tech, Tools, Trends

With about 420 million active users (more than 50% of them logging in every day) Facebook really is a James Bond villain’s dream come true. And no, it is not just successful. Facebook is killing it’s competitors. It has simply buried Myspace, Orkut and others and won’t stop growing. I don’t know what is going to be the No 1 social network 2020. But currently I bet it still might be Facebook.

What was once google, is – in parts – about to become our favourite Evil Empire. google may still rule everything Pull but Zuckerberg works hard to turn its business into a Push Superpower. If you search for the Large Hadron Collider you choose google. But Facebook is your choice for the restaurant around the corner and your fave sneaker brand. And since wednesday things are on the move again…

One Graph to Rule them all

In case you haven’t heard the term Social Graph before – it will either become important or obsolete in the future – simply because Facebook wants to own or dominate it. In his 2007 article ‘Thoughts on the Social Graph‘ Brad Fitzpatrick talked about the Social Graph as ‘the global mapping of everybody and how they’re related‘. Basically it is the people you know, the stuff you listen to, read, tweet, and tag, and what you put on maps – and the question how you access and distribute the information to your friends. By now there wasn’t one but many disperse social graphs. But the more we are intertwined on Facebook as the one connector, the better the platform’s chances to become the knot of earth’s social graph. Now, after some technical adjustments last week Facebook is de facto trying to nothing less than that.

Well, world domination looks a little bit different, I have to admit. Mark Zuckerberg’s tools for world domination are so unobrusive that nobody understand them who is not part of the industry. What Facebook delivered on its F8 conference looked…well…small…but may have more than significant outcomes.

• Cornerstone of Facebook’s conquest is the Open Graph Protocol -  basically a techn0logical extension of the social network that treats the free web (the artist formerly known as Not Facebook) as Facebook entities.
• This can be studied through Facebook’s well known ‘I like’ button (plus many more new social plugins) which is now available for every web page (look up). Facebook will treat blog posts (which are part of the system) just like Facebook posts – and of course draws data from them.
• Facebook Fanpages and ‘Fans’ do not exist anymore, get replaced by ‘I like’
• Facebook Connect as a quasi-brand will be dumped
• And a couple of other revisions. Facebook did not go too much into details but it will soon finish off all other competitors in the economy by offering its own currency and geo-location solutions.

Wow! A button.

These little, ‘insignificant’ revisions do not seem revolutionary in the first place. But they are. Facebook has pushed its social network beyond its own boundaries before (Facebook Connect). This not very visible but revolutionary concept has made close to a million users interact with the platform. And most of them are not even aware what they are using. By outsourcing the ‘I like button’ to the free web, Facebook has indeed taken the next step. It will now add its social features to the internet with a clear vision – to define this web and attach it to Facebook.

Everything that the net was 5 or more years ago, Facebook is today.

From now on 420 million Facebook users will express approval via Facebook, tag and exchange via Facebook and will soon pay via Facebook – no matter where they are. Simply because Facebook offers the right buttons and a user base large enough to connect their different identities. Levi’s U.S. has already come up with a pretty horrible vision of what will be (it will be better, for sure). But fast forward to July 2010 and I am sure quite a bunch of new applications will intertwine you, your friends and you favourite brands. Shiv Singh’s is completely right with his claim that ‘Facebook becomes the Internet’s Social Glue.’

“I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords”

No matter if you like it or not – Facebook has just staged a bunch of new tools that we have to deal with. The ‘I like’ button is just the most obvious element of the Open Graph surfacing right now. And I tested it now for three days on davaidavai. I have to admit my following words are completely subjective and can only give a first hint about what the most evil Facebook ever can do for you. But you have to start somewhere.

In order to add the ‘I like’ button to my WordPress blog I have installed Dean’s WordPress Plugin. It is very convenient and offers some added functionalities to coding-idiots like me. My blog’s relationship with Facebook was this – by now I offered my blog’s Facebook Fanpage as a convenient addition for some of my readers to access it. Not everyone likes RSS feeds. So, a good old Fan button was the method of choice for Facebookistas to read davaidavai.

I now may have to rethink this now and give this Facebook touchpoint more room – the new social plugins may seem to work pretty well. My comparably small Facebook userbase has grown significantly over the last couple of days.

• New Facebook ‘Fans’ are up five-fold
• Facebook userbase has grown by 10%
• User ‘I like’s’ + related status message increase traffic to my blog from Facebook

As I said, this is not big. But it gives a first hint at what might lie ahead. Facebook might really be able to stage tools which might really turn it into a new social layer adding traffic, data and relevance to the web.

It’s nice but please hate it.

I constantly mistreat davaidavai as a testing range for my professional live. I just like to ‘try shit‘ (Jeff Jarvis) and see how it works. More than obviously, criticism towards Facebook’s new concept is necessary. Facebook is and stays Privacy’s Public Enemy Number 1 -  its plans to tie the world’s social graph to its rules and procedures increases the likeliness of very dramatic challenges for our personal privacy. Especially its free exchange of uncontrolled user data with third party apps is widely perceived as key problem (beyond this world domination plan). Check out what you can do to at least kind of keep control (well…) at Fast Company.

Secondly – and that’s a more functional criticism – I think the replacement of the Fan button is only in parts a good idea. I believe users will have a hard time understanding the different ‘Likes’. Functionally the old ‘Like’ and the old ‘Fan button’ were similar – what you did was to show support to something and subscribe to the thread. But, becoming a Fan and liking something had a different role. Sure, Facebook wanted to ease the user’s confession to e.g. a brand. But it’s getting a little confusing with too many redundant buttons with different functionalities. Let’s take a look at my employer’s Facebook page.

Finally – I would have preferred to keep the old Fan button, simply because it was more than a button press. Becoming a fan made you turn into something else than just by liking something. Fans are something a brand can strive for…but what are we now? Likers??? I think Facebook will hate the fact that everything they started now will revolve around this verb. By now we had a personality as Fans. Now we turn into a giant and very dynamic data stream – a data stream that likes, likes, likes, likes, likes, likes, likes…….

Tell me what you think? Is it threatening or cool? Are we about to extradite our digital lives to Facebook? Or is it just another evolutionary step with a big player dominating the market? Are there credible alternatives? And – what were your personal experiences with the first couple of days of Open Graph connected to your blog? Leave me a message. I am happy to learn more from you.

Image: Image of Mark Zuckerberg, Used under a Creative Commons License from Methieuthouvenin

Tags: Business, Facebook, Future, I like, Open Graph, Philosophy, Social Graph, Social Networks, Strategy, Tech, Tools, Trends, World

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