Facebook Knows You're A Dog

Peter Steiner's famous cartoon in New Yorker magazine first appeared in 1993 and has adorned a million powerpoint slides since.  The cartoon's single line, 'On the internet no one knows you're a dog', captured some of the crazy, frontier spirit of the web, where it seemed the normal rules did not apply.  However, that could be about to change as Facebook rattles its way up to 300 million users worldwide, making it more populus than all but four of the globe's countries, powered by its new Connect facility and Open Stream API.  In this instantly-seminal Wired essay, Fred Vogelstein makes the point: "Connect and Open Stream don't just allow users to access their Facebook networks from anywhere online. They also help realize Facebook's longtime vision of giving users a unique, Web-wide online profile. By linking Web activity to Facebook accounts, they begin to replace the largely anonymous "no one knows you're a dog" version of online identity with one in which every action is tied to who users really are."  Regardless of the way you may feel about Facebook, it's becoming increasingly easy to see how much better the web can be if you can search people - not just pages.  The result will be a very different looking web, where information-overloaded people circle the wagons to create troll-free social networks of their most trusted contacts, picking up whispers, buying tips and news only from within those groups.  For brands, the value of links from within those circles will be much higher than from any other source.  "Why settle for articles about the Chrysler bankruptcy that the Google News algorithm recommends when you can read what your friends suggest?", says Vogelstein, in a shift which FriendFeed users might recognise.  In other words, who wants to know what a dog thinks?  And the realisation of the value of this information is not lost on Google, as shown by the company's launch of Friend Connect and more recently individual profiles.  No doubt all driven by the ever-growing blackhole in its search results created by Zuckerberg's empire which is vast but invisible to the Google index.  But show me the money, right?  Well Facebook has quietly been building annual revenues to the tune of $275m.  Nowhere near the scale of the shekel machine that is Google.  However, as the Wired article notes, Messrs Page & Brin bowled along for five years before stumbling over the Adsense pot of gold.  And Facebook's recent credit system shows it is serious about innovation.  All of which could mean a troll-free web experience, a shake-up of Search and some genuine competition for Google.  And fewer dogs.

Comments

[Ian]

Yeah, fair enough. But there are some worrying social consequences that I think you're missing, James.

This "circling of wagons" that you describe may be attractive, (especially for marketers) but is it, in fact, socially damaging? Surrounding yourself with "like-minded" people might feel good from the inside, but really you're building an echo-chamber for your own opinions - and I think that may be harmful to society as a whole.

I'm not a fan of building walls, and I believe that it's not a huge leap from "like-minded" to "narrow-minded". Already this is happening in the real world - last week's Economist noted research showing that people in the States are increasingly choosing to live amongst those who share identical political views to themselves. I believe such communities are likely to be socially impoverished (not to mention, tedious and bland) and will tend towards the development of increasingly polarised and intolerant viewpoints. This cannot be a good thing in our current world.

If this trend towards actively removing oneself from hearing or seeing anything that challenges one's viewpoint is replicated online through services like Facebook then I feel we will lose something enormously valuable. The Internet has always been a place for vigorous, challenging debate. Long may that continue.

[James Cherkoff]

Well said Ian, a perfect counterblast. ;-)

One of my favourite ideas from Clay Shirky's book is there are two types of 'capital' in social networks - that which bonds and that which bridges. It's a pretty straightforward notion and all the better for it. The most successful networks have people who are very good at making that network tick and others who remember to open the window from time to time.

[Anders Online Marketing]

I am working with marketing in Denmark and is searching for inspiration in the digital world. Thanks for inspiration