Facebook: Still a Silo
17. August 2007 – 00:11 byWow, Facebook is providing some RSS feeds. It’s opening up a little bit and many people applaud the effort. And yes, it’s cool to have them. There are feeds for notifications, posted items by friends, status updates, and maybe some more. I can subscribe to them and read them in my feed reader without visiting Facebook. Fine.
But is this a reason to become all excited about it? Isn’t Facebook a silo anymore? I think it still is. Exporting my contacts? No way. Importing them? Nope. Don’t get me wrong, though. Facebook has come a long way from a social network for students which required an email address with an .edu domain to the network it is today. But it is not open. Maybe I am expecting too much from it. Maybe its users don’t want or don’t care about portable social networks. Maybe.
10 Responses to “Facebook: Still a Silo”
step by step
By marcel weiss on Aug 17, 2007
Maybe
I really want to see a completely open social network, though sometimes I think just people like us - geeks, early adopters - want to see this happen. The millions of users of Facebook and MySpace probably don’t care. So why should those who run the networks?
My negative thoughts this week.
By Carsten Pötter on Aug 17, 2007
I think it will be similar to Linux. It’ll have to go a long way until it will reach the masses.
btw. your ’subscribing to comments’ doesn’t seem to work.
By marcel weiss on Aug 18, 2007
What isn’t working? I have just updated the plugin; hopefully it’s working now.
Any suggestion for a plugin like that?
By Carsten Pötter on Aug 18, 2007
well, I don’t get any emails although I subscribed to it.
I use this one:
http://txfx.net/code/wordpress/subscribe-to-comments/
By marcel weiss on Aug 18, 2007
test
By Carsten on Aug 18, 2007
Hm, I use the same one.
By Carsten Pötter on Aug 18, 2007
Well, my test has been positive. I’ve got an email; in my spam folder, though.
By Carsten Pötter on Aug 18, 2007
That’s weird. checked my spamfolder: none.
By marcel weiss on Aug 19, 2007