My good mate Trevor Cook has pointed to the superb Richard Florida’s blog and an article about music, Rick Rubin and today’s kids written by Lynn Hirschberg of the New York Times Magazine.
A key quote is this:
“[the kids] told us that MySpace is over, it’s just not cool anymore; Facebook is still cool, but that might not last much longer; and the biggest thing in their life is word of mouth. That’s how they hear about music, bands, everything”
That’s the kids, but Facebook is about adults rather than kids (which was more MySpace’s ‘domain’, if you’ll pardon the pun).
History tells us that when 35+ year olds take to something en masse, as they/we have with Facebook, then it is likely to be around for a little while yet — we hate change!
What is also interesting is that Facebook has just quietly announced it’s going to ‘open the gate’ to Google.
Says the Facebook blog:
“Starting today, we are making limited public search listings available to people who are not logged in to Facebook. We’re expanding search so that people can see which of their friends are on Facebook more easily. The public search listing contains less information than someone could find right after signing up anyway, so we’re not exposing any new information, and you have complete control over your public search listing.”
This is an example of how a public search listing appears. It contains your name and current profile picture thumbnail. If you do not want this listing to appear, you can change your Search Privacy settings.
In a few weeks, we will allow these Public Search listings (depending on users’ individual privacy settings) to be found by search engines like Google, MSN Live, Yahoo, etc. We think this will help more people connect and find value from Facebook without exposing any actual profile information or data.
As always, if you do not want your public search listing to be visible to people searching from outside of Facebook, you can control that from the Search Privacy page. Please note that you will only appear in searches outside Facebook when your search settings are set to “Everyone”. “
The walled garden gets its garden gate opened ever-so-slightly.
Where will it go next?
UPDATE: Howard Rheingold (a key figure in my PhD readings and a uber-thinker of communities and virtuality) doesn’t think Facebook will last. Hat-tip to Dave Phillips for the link.
Currently playing:
‘Yma’ by Boozoo Bajou.
The whole album, ‘Satta’, is just wonderful background study music!
Heartily recommended.
Pingback: Free Chat Rooms