Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Facebook as the new AOL?

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As I browse the web, the more I start seeing these “Like” buttons (especially these buttons) and social widgets from your friendly neighborhood Facebook, the more I’m starting to view Facebook as more than a website—a lot more. One of the side effects of the web 2.0 era is that you have several large web companies providing the ability for programmers to create new interconnected applications. Developers have created websites, desktop applications, mobile apps, and car operating systems based on the services that these giant web companies provide. The sheer amount of Twitter applications for both the computer and the smart phone, as well as the several url shortners and Twitter reporting services are just a few examples of this great effect. While this development has lots of promise, a big side effect is that this phenomenon gives the theoretical possibility for one player to try to wrap the web into a single portal like AOL once did.

Enter Facebook.

Facebook is increasingly becoming the one stop shop where people can have their complete Internet experience. More people use Facebook Chat than I would have ever thought, your messages in Facebook has officially become a new email account to check every day (and word is that Facebook is renovating its messaging service), and the mobile apps on iPhone, Android, and Blackberry have the ability to sync your contacts, calendar, and messages to your mobile phone so you also have the Facebook experience there.. Also, if you haven’t noticed, Facebook search is slowly becoming more and more intricate and Google may want to pay attention sometime soon.

When you include the freaky Facebook like button, Facebook widgets that tells you that 5 of your friends also like this restaurant from that restaurant’s website, and the shock that you had on Yelp.com greeting you by name and listing your interests, you can’t help but be concerned. Just like AOL built their run down browser based on Internet Explorer and convinced so many people that that browser was the only way to get on the internet, it seems like Facebook may be trying to accomplish something somewhat similar.

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