What Facebook is missing out on...

It strikes me as somewhat absurd that Facebook don’t see the opportunity they are presented with in face of the recent criticism. The criticism, as you are probably well aware off, is in my view best summed up in Leif Harmsen’s words “It is not ‘your’ Facebook profile. It is Facebook’s profile about you”, he considers it a repressive regime akin to North Korea, and he’s not alone. Yet this isn’t anything new. It’s more a case of the “commoners” starting to question what the more tech savvy ones of us have questioned for quite some time, and thus the topic has gained some momentum in the mainstream press as well.

The problem is obvious, as problems often are, but the solutions keep escaping the minds of clever people. Or does it really? A related debate I have followed since I first heard a discussion about social networking 3.0 at Stanford in 2007, is about how we can transfer ownership, and more importantly control over user information to the users. The simplest solution is of course just to pressure sites like Facebook to change their terms of use, but a more lasting solution would include the possibility for users to bring their friends, pictures and other information with them between social networking sites. Undoubtedly there are many design issues for such a system, for example I certainly have multiple online identities; my Facebook content isn’t really suitable for my LinkedIn page and so on. And where would my information be hosted? Would I have to buy server space in case someone wanted to view my profile while I was online? Would the standard allow new networking sites to add slots for specific information that were only suitable for that site (like favorite recipes for a cooking site, or where I’ve been for a scuba diving site), and how would I controll what and how much  information is sent to each site I visit?

This however isn’t the biggest problem; the reason why such systems haven’t been implemented is that no one with the leverage to create this system has done it yet. This system has to be made by the right people, people that can reach critical mass. At present, only geeks and idealists would bother to learn how to use a totally new system, especially because something like that sounds very complicated. The average user doesn’t want complicated stuff, they want simplicity, and they just want to use the product. So to reach critical mass for such a system you would have to have some way of gaining a lot of users for it fast. Like a big already existing user base, like Facebook has, but wait - why should Facebook make this system? Facebook like it the way it is, they own your content (or their content about you to be accurate), and can use it for pretty much whatever they want. In addition to this Facebook enjoys users that have extremely high switching costs, something which might be their biggest competitive advantage. It seems that Facebook is in a perfect place.

So why should Facebook do it?
The first reason why Facebook should create a system for sharing information is that it would buy them credit. It would buy them credit with the tech community for being open and with the media for listening to them. It would buy them credit with normal users because they would feel safer and because they have the option to leave. Remember why some people escaped the Matrix? It turned out that given an unconscious choice nearly 99 % of test subjects would accept the program anyway. I see no reason why this shouldn’t hold true for Facebook as well, as the primary reason people leave is because they are malcontent by Facebook’s closed systems and strict privacy policy (at least if we believe random Internet chatter - which we do).

Secondly, and maybe more importantly, I believe that if Facebook don’t do this, others will. Services such as Google Accounts and Open ID don’t have a long way to go to allow users to store information that at their request can used by third party sites. Right now Facebook can deny Open ID and other such services to provide login to their site, but can they still do that in 3 years? Right now they can delay the inevitable move to such services, but as I wrote in a blog post some time ago, change happens when change is due. Change isn’t always created willingly, it’s just there and those that catch the wave gain momentum, furthermore no surfer ever caught the back of a wave. If people gets used to logging in to their favorite sites through a third party provider, I’m not sure Facebook can withhold the pressure.

The third reason Facebook should use their user base to create an open, user owned system that can transfer information easily from site to site is that whatever disadvantage Facebook sees in having users logging in to their site via a third party provider will be Facebook’s advantage against new social sites. If users are used to using their Facebook login when they log into pages on the net, they will expect new sites to follow this convention, thus granting Facebook some limited power to monitor and control new services.

The fourth reason Facebook should do this is because there’s bound to be a business model in it. What this model is, I’m not sure, but it could for example be that commercial sites would have to pay a small fee to use the service, or that when you log in you get redirected through Facebook’s ad page.

The fifth and final reason is that this would be a good first step towards extending into new forms of web services. When users already have a login, it should be easier to gain momentum for new and exciting products. Google has already realized this when they launched both Wave and Buzz (though this seems to be bad examples, as both services are virtual ghost towns). Having a customer base like Facebook’s is an incredible asset, in the case of Facebook an asset that remains close to unexploited. Surely marketing new web services through Facebook would ensure enough users to create critical mass for many services?

Maybe Facebook as we know it today is just a stepping stone? I certainly think that they should consider expanding their services, and specifically they should start making a product that they could easily gain market leadership with almost immediately, namely an open profile service that provides an API for other services to let users log in with their Facebook profiles. With the share number of users Facebook has it shouldn’t be a problem becoming the market leader in this "sort of related" market.

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"It’s all about making each other good"

When I was a kid I followed football (or soccer as some would have us believe it’s called), and as any kid I was cheering for my local team - Rosenborg. As faith would have it Rosenborg was by far the best team in Norway, and I’m not saying that just because it was my team, they actually won the Premier Division every year from 1992 – 2004, exactly when I was growing up. They were world class, yet they were comprised of mainly local heroes. It would almost be an exaggeration to say they were a professional team, I mean Norway is small and the town I’m from even smaller, so that the pool of players that could be recruited locally were limited. In fact it’s said that when Rosenborg played Milan (a game which they won 2-1) in the 1996-97 season of the Champions League, that the captain of Rosenborg were so psyched to meet these “real” players that he asked them all for their autographs before the game started. So how could this little team of local heroes win against teams such as AC Milan, Olympiacos or Borussia Dortmund?

The coach of this particular team was another local hero that had in his days been a pretty good player and had played for Rosenborg and Vålerenga in the 1960’s. To this day I’m convinced that it was he that made Rosenborg so great and that it to a large part was two things that he firmly believed. Firstly he believed in always being offensive, under his reign Rosenborg consequently followed a 4-3-3 formation, which for those of you who don’t know the sport that well is a fairly offensive set-up. Secondly, and maybe more importantly he believed in having each individual tone down for the good of the team, he meant that if everyone tried to get the team better the team would be better than the sum of the talent. I remember hearing him speak once, I must have been about 10 years old, and he said this, he said “It’s all about making each other good”. And that’s a sentence that has resonated with me ever since. A week or so later I saw a game they played and I noticed that two of their players had played their way past the goal keeper, which had given up about 10 meters or so behind them. They were both at the goal line and one of them has the ball and could easily have put it in, but he didn’t, he passed it to his friend and let him score the goal. This so drove home the idea that it’s all about the team and not about individual glory.

I think we all have something to learn from this, if you make those around you shine they might shine on you next. In fact it’s inevitable. I try to make this my philosophy to, when we have exams at school I don’t mind sharing my thoughts on how to read or how to write assignments, when I work somewhere I don’t mind sharing my expertise with others and when I have a business idea I tell everyone I know about it. And if someone asks if they can have it, or use it, or even just tell someone else about it, I say “of course – go crazy”. Why do I do this? Well, firstly I don’t think anybody will steal my ideas without my permission (they’re honestly not -that- great), but more importantly I wouldn’t mind it if they did. How could that be bad for me?

If you liked this post or any other post feel free to click the “follow” button to the right to stay tuned to new posts when they appear. You can also follow me on Twitter as @vetleen.