Facebook fad or future - TVO's The Agenda

The Nov 7, 2007 The Agenda on TVO starts off with swearing (seriously) and then has a panel on Facebook.  Unfortunately TVO's new video player doesn't show you a time index (a control bar will come up at the bottom of the video if you put your mouse over the video window), so I can't point you at a starting time for the panel, other than to say it's roughly one-third along.

I can't direct link to the video either, but it's on their videos page, I think it only stays up for a week.  You can also get audio of just the Facebook segment free via iTunes or video also from iTunes.

I'm never convinced that having a bunch of middle-aged people talk about a technology that started with university students is particularly useful.  Anyway, Om Malik was there, he talked about the valuation and such.

Om has a good posting about Facebook Beacon, which may or may not be evil - Facebook’s Cruel Intentions, Facebook Responds.

Middle-aged opinionmaking aside, the Agenda discussion is informative, and at 32 minutes long, comprehensive.  I like Nancy Baym's turn of phrase about Microsoft and Facebook - the moderator asks "can Facebook make Microsoft cool?" and she responds "I don't think so, it's like the middle-aged man with a new sports car".  Baym's website Online Fandom also reminds me that you can also get TVO video through iTunes, as a free video podcast.  It's interesting to see all the panelists all commenting on each other's blog postings - I have to wonder whether they made similar connections and had any discussions within Facebook.  (And of course since Facebook is a dark net, I have no easy way of discovering this.)

Mathew Ingram - http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2007/11/09/video-me-talking-about-facebook/

Mary Evans - http://markevanstech.com/2007/11/09/whats-a-friend-these-days/

Jesse Hirsh - http://jesse.openflows.org/the-clash-of-the-titans-20/

They talked a lot about about Beacon and all this application notification virality, the dream/nightmare of these megatargeted social network ads (which I have already been ranting about on Facebook).  They also discuss Facebook apps and Google OpenSocial briefly.

In my experience, the main thing Facebook has done is connected me to a few people from Junior High, and gets me a little bit of insight into activities of some people who don't have blogs.  But for me overall I get way more out of my blog connections.

This URL should get you to the Agenda audio Podcasts page in iTunes:

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=200802797

and this one to their video podcasts

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=251692621

(Additional update after I realised The Agenda has both audio and video podcasts on iTunes.)

Comments

[Jesse Hirsh]

Hey Richard,

I went through the source of the page and found a direct link to the video that starts with the facebook panel:

http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/tvoutils/globalfiles/VideoPop.cfm?spot_id=3344&sitefolder=theagenda

I'm also not middle aged, although not yet. Still I would hope you found my contribution to the show as being useful. :)

They key thing about facebook, in contrast to blogs for example, is that as a platform it is far more accessible and easy to use. That's why so many people are using facebook, and via facebook are finally using the internet in a genuinely interactive manner.

I've been running a blog for several years, and before that ran email lists and discussion fora. Facebook is totally different in that it brings a much broader audience to the table. I'll post the same content to my blog and inside of facebook and the facebook note gets way more comments and responses.

I also think that facebook is subjective, and it is what you make of it. So some people don't get cause they don't use it in a way that expands their horizon(s).

I write a blog cause I want to express myself and speak to an audience. I use facebook for similar purposes, but also like the way it facilitates this broader interactivity I mentioned.

Maybe when more people start using google reader and similar apps will blogs get to a mass level the way facebook currently is...

-j

[Richard Akerman]

I guess it depends on your audience, my postings are generally very technical anyway. Also I can easily separate professional from non-work activities in a way that is not currently possible in the flat space of Facebook. When Facebook adds more grouping and filtering capabilities I may use it a bit more. The fact that it's closed still creates a lot of issues: I create (or copy over) content for them, for free, which depending how you read the terms&conditions, they then own. They get all kinds of statistics about the content itself and who accesses it, none of which analysis is available to me as "just a user", and all of which is used by Facebook and partners to market back to me and my friends. Also, none of the Facebook content can be discovered in a general web search, or join the general web discussion. Contrast that with my blog, where I get stats on every visitor and click, and where anything I write shows up in Google and Technorati almost immediately.