I have a feeling we are going to hear a lot about liking and Facebook over the next few days, but what remains to be seen is how much we'll hear about liking Facebook. No doubt, the social networking giant dropped a bomb at f8 when it announced the full scope of upcoming changes that would help spread Facebook across the web.
The news at f8 didn't come as a complete surprise. Facebook had already announced plans to change the "Become a Fan" button to a "like" button. They also announced plans to integrate Facebook on websites without the need for people to log in to each individual website.
But sneak peaks are one thing. Hearing it all rolled up together is quite another. It's easy to see how Facebook is prepared to spread across the web, and it's easy to see how that is going to make a lot of people and a lot of companies uncomfortable. Facebook already has its fingers across the web as a login service to other websites, but in adding social features, Facebook might become ever-present in our web lives.
What's new? Most of us are familiar with the ability to log in to websites using our Facebook credentials. And we've become accustomed to the little tweet boxes on articles that make it easy to post articles on Twitter. The changes announced at f8 are like those two aspects having accidentally fallen into a vat of radioactive material and mutated into something extraordinary.
Among the changes are social plugins that will not only allow us to 'like' the things we find on the web, we'll even be able to carry on conversations with our Facebook buddies without going to the Facebook site. These 'like' buttons will also be supercharged intelligent buttons that have the ability to modify your profile, so if you like a restaurant on Yelp, it might become listed as one of your favorite restaurants on your Facebook profile. Other changes include allowing developers to store more information about us for longer periods of time and a universal currency for Facebook that allows you to buy credits from Facebook and spend them in FarmVille or other popular Facebook apps.
Read more about the new features announced at f8
In many ways, this will be a real boon for many of us. Just as Microsoft's dominance in the OS market was good for us and Apple's dominance in the smartphone market is good for us, Facebook dominating the social aspects of the web will be a real boon for our web experience. Imagine browsing over to the New York Times and seeing a list of recommended articles that are truly personalized, seeing which articles your friends read and liked and being able to recommend those articles back to your friend or even carry on a discussion right there on the New York Times site.
Now imagine browsing to the Wall Street Journal and not seeing any of this. It might be enough to make you stop visiting the Wall Street Journal, which is exactly why some people are uncomfortable with so much power going over to Facebook. Certainly, Microsoft used its power against consumers when it squashed technologies like driving Netscape out of business through the dominance of its operating system rather than the technological advances of Internet Explorer. And Apple has ruled over the iPhone app store like a ruthless dictator, even making the government uncomfortable when they denied Google Voice on the iPhone.
So, it's easy to see where the announcements have been met with mixed feelings. In the end, what we all must question is whether or not we would push that 'like' button on Facebook itself.
Umm, this only applies to people who actually have facebook accounts, right? I mean, the web will just kick on as usual for the rest of us? Except now we’ll be able to see Facebook peoples photos and name in a little box in the corner. Sweet dude.
I myself have a FB account, and I use it quite often, mostly to keep in touch w/ people I know personally…but I am more comfortable thinking of it being just that. A site to go to for online “socializing,” etc., not to invade any other space where I might visit online, like some sort of spy.
It’s bad enough that the government is doing more and more of this kind of thing! Why must FB join the Big Brother mentality, eh??
Enough!
I have been reading on pros and cons of face book on number of times from newspapers,magazines and from some website.
Honestly saying, in initial stages,many newspapers were against on line news,photos,updates etc.,etc.,
Now, what happened?Why, they have started giving news,sharing their news by link etc., to these social websites.
All these are all on account of business promotions or business mis match or some jealousy or some mistrust ideas.
Thats all,
As on today, face book had become day today necessary commodity to many world people.,
fb like all other networking site do one thing. Make a person able to sell thier goods.
Every time they change something, I go to the privacy page and make sure my settings are correct. I haven’t had any trouble. My friends have had ads appear on the side of the page that picked up words from their conversations. That’s just a little too much.
FaceBook–I visit it each day for checking in on things–Facebook/the website does have BUGS–it must be all the traffic/but I can most times have no difficulties at all..I like FaceBook more than the Twitter days I spent–Twitter is a terrorist website/Facebook just has some “rather” suspicious characters..like organized crime figures–I’m a double-checker on all things WEB.
I made sure to opt-out of the “log into everything automatically” thing.
I’d much rather manually choose which sites I attach to my Facebook page.
And, @S. Talker: I’m pretty sure this means that people who choose not to have Facebook accounts will simply not be able to use the internet because no sites will work.
I like Facebook,but the Chinese gov does not.
Too bad it has come to this.
Letting everyone know of
certain things is a no-no! My info, was shared…they know
my cars & lifestyle, and this made people think I’m lazy and faking a real disability. Some friends huh?
Well until this happens to them…say la vie!!!OR Chow.
I would rather have Facebook, MySpace, and MSN Profile than the famous Twitter. As soon as I signed up for Twitter I started getting spam emails with viruses attached to them from people who wanted to “be my friend”. Thank goodness for Norton Internet Security! It blocked and quarantined it all! After 24 hours of nonsense from stupid infectious emails I QUIT Twitter and decided to stick with the three safer ones mentioned above.
IMHO, using Facebook is asking for trouble. There are so many ways to get yourself in trouble on all the social web programs & Facebook is not an exception by a long shot. My advice is to avoid them at all costs to be on the safe side.
How will we ever learn anything new if FB, or any online networking site, decides what we should and should not see? Granted there are some sites I’d rather avoid, but that’s for the “content” settings in your browser. I think FB is becoming a little too ubiquitous.
Facebook is probably trying to be more politically correct & more in line with BO’s big brother super-liberal leftist crap that wants to remove all our rights, liberties, etc. as Americans. I say stuff that, FACEBOOK!!!!!
Sounds very nice, hope be nice too…
FaceBook sucks !!! And it just keeps getting worse !!! What about all those convicts threatening their victims from their prison cells. British government actually had to ask Facebook to delete the accounts of 30 known incarcerated persons who were either running organized crime from their cells, or threatening their victims with additional violence once released. What about the 1.5 million accounts recently (last week) hacked by the Russian Kirillos, and being sold on the internet for $45.00 USD per 1000 accounts, including passwords and usernames?!?!?! Great job Team FaceBook !!! AND we should just trust you with this new thing … … WHY ?!?!?!?!?! FACEBOOK cares about FACEBOOK, not user safety, privacy, or comfort. FACEBOOK SUCKS and should be shutdown IMMEDIATELY !!!
“Just as Microsoft’s dominance in the OS market was good for us” – Are you a blithering idiot? MS dominance of the OS network has meant death for inovation and accountability for software users. If any other part of your life worked as badly as your operating system, you would change it immediately. It is pathetic, and what is worse, opinionated fools like you are supporting such nonsense!
If you ever had any credibility as a commentator, you’ve shown you are a corporate whore… probably best if you stopped talking now.
CameronKay – so, it’s the provider of a website who is to blame for what convicts get up to? It’s nothing to do at all with how prisons are run and how te inmates’ activities are monitored at all.
Yeah, ban and shut down everything that’s used for crime – ban cars because they kill people and are used in robberies – for that matter, ban stockings and hoodies, ban money as people do naughty things with it, and you’ve got to cut your vegetables with a spoon now…
This sort of reactionary behaviour would be laughable if it wasn’t so popular. Crawl back under your rock.. except you’d ban them, because they can be used for crime too…
I loathe Facebook. I signed up for it just to keep up with my family, it immediately accessed my Yahoo contacts, too invasive for me. Then, recently, someone hacked my contact list, either through Facebook or Yahoo and have been sending, everyone I regularly email, spam – in my name! I am furious. I wrote to Yahoo support and they had no viable solution, they didn’t even want to find the spammers. I am through with Facebook and Yahoo. My grandchildren are getting emails, in my name, advertising Viagra. I’ve had to apologize and tell everyone to not open anything from Yahoo bearing my name. How embarrassing!
i do like facebook and i’m using it over a year ! it has changed several times since i became a fan of facebook;) we can surely say facebook is one of the best social communication sites but someday it will lose its users and i wanna say if it continue changing the appearance it would lose its old users! and i will leave it
For all who are as outraged as I am about Facebook policies, read this and send your own complaint to the FTC:
Facebook Privacy Complaint to FTC filed by EPIC-
“Under the revised settings, even when a user un-checks all boxes and indicates that none of the personal information listed above should be disclosed to third party application developers, Facebook states that “applications will always be able to access your publicly available information (Name, Profile Picture, Gender, Current City, Networks, Friend List, and Pages) and information that is visible to Everyone,” EPIC wrote.
Before the Federal Trade Commission, Washington, DC
In the Matter of Facebook, Inc.
Complaint, Request for Investigation, Injunction, and Other Relief
ELECTRONIC PRIVACY INFORMATION CENTER
1718 Connecticut Ave., NW Suite 200
Washington, DC 20009
202-483-1140 (tel)
202-483-1248 (fax)
December 17, 2009
My email address was ‘harvested’ from a new users online address book, and I was sent an invitation to join him; but at the bottom was a list of 5 Facebook members they thought I might like to follow as well! When contacted to find out how my name was linked with 5 people NOT in my friends’ online book, the answer is that once Facebook gets its’ claws into your info, it is theirs forever!!! You can’t remove or edit it, and once out of the box, you lose total control. Now, they want to take over the world!
I say sue the profit out of Facebook and give our privacy back to us.
Am I the odd man out? I have never been in/on Facebook/Twitter/ But then I don’t own a mobile phone either.
Used to, naively, think that it didn’t matter what other people or organisations knew of me. I had nothing to hide.
I have been appraised, by people more knowledgeable than I on this subject, that there are many bigoted, and dangerous people, both within government organisations and privately who would distort and use even the smallest snippet of personal information to my disadvantage.
So WHO is Facebook?. I don’t know them, why should they wish to know me? If they want information of me. Why? If I wish to give out on myself, personality, likes and dislikes, first I want to know who the hell I’m telling it to, and more importantly. What the heck are you doing with my private details?
I myself have a FB account, Why must FB join the Big Brother mentality eh My advice is to avoid them at all costs to be on the safe side.
I’ve managed to live 67 years and used computers semi-pro for 29 of them without tweeting, facebook or any of the other ‘essential’ – really really cool – can’t live with out, stuff.
So facebook et al isn’t essential all. Is it.
(Thinks, must give the cave a wash?
I really wish FB would focus on helping its users have deeper levels of connections. For example, updating some features for groups would help. Most of the groups I am interested in joining have little or no activity to them.
Instead, FB is focusing on something else. What it is, I’m not sure of, but it’s pretty far from what they claim to do… help people connect.