I have very mixed beliefs in the future of Facebook. It doesn’t make any money, lots of people are leaving it and the claim that it will replace email seems a little far fetched. I actually think the only way it will ever become the future as people seem to think will be through a shared and probably opensource API.
If the messaging, friends, apps logic was shared and you could choose your hoster, provider (whatever the term should be) you (or I) might be more prepared to get involved. In some respects Facebook could replace email; it has contacts, messaging, images and so forth. It could also enhance the experience a lot.
However the email I send within clients needs to stay within clients and therefore Facebook will not cut it there. However if the market for this format was opened up then people could develop there own clients. However in the same way I think Twitter might struggle in the long run (surely we will need longer messages soon?), if this is not opened up why should we all develop on platform we can not control.
What may end up happening is openid or another open source project taking control and being the driver. Google Buzz and Microsoft’s efforts have not worked as yet so they may well be keen to invest in this method. Also the phone operating systems are going to be crucial in this. In fact they could even drive it.
As it stands I have deactivated my Facebook account in the fall out from their attempt to make all profiles fully public. I decided from that point that Facebook has too much information on me and there was too little control on it. Until that changes I wont be going back.
You’ve got too much time on your hands since resigning from FaceBook
IMO Facebook will not fail, it has too much use to the American government – the CIA has a capitalist venture wing that invested heavily in Facebook. They like to know what people are up to!
I think it will become the white pages of the internet and will probably be swallowed up by Microsoft or Google – I used to sway more towards MS but now think Google could monitize Facebook more than any other company.
Doug,
You might be right about the Facebook investment, I don’t think it will fail completely but I am not sure how it will grow and become a fundamental tool like email has.
Indeed if everyone knew things like the CIA involvement it is even more likely to lose people, at least ones like me!
My main interest is whether it will move more into our lives. In that way I remain unconvinced although I do think it would be useful if it did, at least as a framework.
Today Facebook have been making announcements and as a result they are moving toward an extended API.
As part of that news opensocial.org came to my attention. This is the opensource API I was thinking of.
http://www.opensocial.org/