Holy Cow Batman! Facebook just stole our Internet!

Posted April 21, 2010

TechCrunch just reported that Facebook has taken control of the Internet. Huh? What is the fuss about? Well, Facebook announced today a plan to reshape the Internet as profoundly as Apple is reshaping mobile computing. They today published a social software platform called the Open Graph. Founder Mark Zuckerberg called it “the most transformative thing we’ve ever done for the web”.

He is right — Facebook just launched the social operating system for the Internet. Like the desktop operating system it both makes everything better for everyone and it grants Facebook an incredible amount of power. While you were not looking, a 23 year old took over the Internet. Deal with it.

The Open Graph republishes the tiny "Like" button. "Like" (or "Recommend", which does the same thing). "Like" is a text link that turns into a little "thumb's up" button with a Twitter-sized comment box like the one on the left. It now can and will be embedded everywhere. Every item on every shopping site, forum, game, and news site will feature a LIke button. Today CNN and ESPN, and IMDb all launched spiffy new "Like" or "Recommend" buttons tied to Facebook.

What is wrong with letting everyone vote on everything? Your "Like" is added to your profile and to the profile of whatever it is you like. Click enough times and Facebook learns a lot about what is popular with whom and in particular they learn a lot about you. Suppose you want to serve up advertisements for your new line of summer sandals targeted at 16 year old girls. Would you rather serve ads based on keywords from Google or to people you know "like" sandals, Lindsay Lohan, and Mylie Cyrus? You will gladly pay more for the latter.

How important is this? Well, it turns out that Facebook serves up one billion "Like" impressions every day. Let that marinate for a moment. Facebook is just shy of a half billion members, so FB users see an average of two Likes every single day.

Open Graph is Facebook's effort to add a social layer to every single website and to personalize every page based on your interests and likes. It is the tip of an enormous and potentially very invasive iceberg. It is the basis of a web-wide personal identification and login system based on Facebook IDs. If you are on Facebook, you are on the Internet. Instead of a walled garden, Facebook is offering an invisible foundation — to which they control access. The Open Graph is open for business. It is not open meaning reciprocal, open source, or community-minded. Open Graph is at best pernicious and is arguably evil.

On top of Open Graph, FB also announced that it is creating a new currency. A job traditionally reserved for central bankers can now be performed by websites (and PayPal's announcement today that it once again carried eBay across the earnings finish line last quarter makes clear just how powerful control of online payment systems can be). Facebook credits can be used to buy stuff, inside a game or out here in meatspace. FB creates credit as well — a job that we used to reserve for these quaint places called banks. Now sites like Plastic Jungle have APIs with Facebook and will create credit to go with the currency. It will work like a virtual casino — if you are a big roller, the house will happily spot you a tray of chips.

Facebook is gulping steroids. It may be commercially wise, but they are concentrating inside one company information and capabilities that were previously social — they belonged to the web itself. If Open Graph scales as quickly as Facebook has, we will look back on it as one of several points when major internet companies began to privatize what had been public commons. Google's self referential search results and Apple's iAds are part of the same problem — a story for another post.