"The sites assemble these bits of data into brilliant databases and reuse the information to provide value-added service—but only within their sites. Once you enter your data into one of these services, you cannot easily use them on another site. Each site is a silo, walled off from the others"
This has been pretty much every ecommerce site since the 90s. I didn't hear anyone clamoring that pets.com, drugstore.com or 1800flowers.com was going to threaten the future of the web. There's more to it than just that "data is siloed" issue. Most ecommerce sites don't have a network effect built-in - they deliver value to me regardless of how many other people use them.
There's the threat of inertia - people won't re-enter their information in to new systems as those systems are introduced. That's certainly a concern, but I really don't see it as a threat. AOL was king for years, and people were scared of them. Then MySpace. Now Facebook. I suspect as people grow up, the focus may move to something that's not yet developed. Certainly the game is Facebook's to lose right now, but I don't think they'll hold on forever.
Granted, I think Tim's point is not specifically facebook but the walled/siloed data sites in general. I also don't think those will ever go away.
This has been pretty much every ecommerce site since the 90s. I didn't hear anyone clamoring that pets.com, drugstore.com or 1800flowers.com was going to threaten the future of the web. There's more to it than just that "data is siloed" issue. Most ecommerce sites don't have a network effect built-in - they deliver value to me regardless of how many other people use them.
There's the threat of inertia - people won't re-enter their information in to new systems as those systems are introduced. That's certainly a concern, but I really don't see it as a threat. AOL was king for years, and people were scared of them. Then MySpace. Now Facebook. I suspect as people grow up, the focus may move to something that's not yet developed. Certainly the game is Facebook's to lose right now, but I don't think they'll hold on forever.
Granted, I think Tim's point is not specifically facebook but the walled/siloed data sites in general. I also don't think those will ever go away.