Can Facebook Lead The Social Web?

Adam Broitman — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:18:00 +0000

Let’s face it, the entire web is becoming social. By the end of 2009, all sites will have some social component to them–and why not?

Where there is content, there can be conversation
When there is conversation, there is engagement
- Most great live presenters ask questions of their audience. They generally don’t do so because they want to know the answer, they do so to keep the audience on their toes
When there is engagement, there is the potential for increased ad revenue (this is not always the case, but creative sales planners can, more easily, find ways to monetize content when users are engaged)

The questions then becomes, who will lead the charge in making the entire web truly social-

Perhaps it will be a current social network that makes it capabilities extensible and lends its audience/tools to content providers
Perhaps it will be new/open standards that drive the social web
The last, least desirable option would be for every content provider to provide their own, proprietary social tool

Over the next few weeks Facebook Connect will be expanding to various content sites, making them more social. In the short term I think that this will be great. I think that new life with be injected into the partner sites. In the long term I worry about the fact that Facebook does not adhere to web standards, their platform is not truly open, and all of my data lives on the Facebook servers, with no way to get it out. This could be an issue.

On the other hand, Google is setting up a set of open standards that takes on these concerns. It will be interesting to see what happens first; will Open Social win the battle, or will Facebook open up more?

I can’t wait to find out! What do you think will happen first?

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Can Facebook Lead The Social Web?

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