Having lived through the dotcom bubble, I know very well the terrible danger of runaway popularity. For a while Facebook was positively awash in Kool-Aid -- remember when they were going to be the next Microsoft and every application in the world was going to run primarily on their platform?
That's dangerous. The problem with bubbles is that they distort your view of reality. You do crazy things, like build out a big company with big infrastructure that is out of proportion to your primary use case. Or chase other people's business models instead of your own because you become addicted to the glare of the relentlessly-moving spotlight.
If, indeed, Facebook can't provide privacy while staying in business, that's a very exciting piece of business news. It means that somebody else -- one site, two sites, hundreds of sites, perhaps something that doesn't look like a site at all -- is going to inherit Facebook's use case, the one that built their business: socializing with a select group of friends without excessive privacy concerns. [1]
To work, fellow nerds!
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[1] Yeah, I know, little or nothing that you type can ever be guaranteed to be truly private. Digital data is too hard to hide and too easy to spread. I strive not to type anything that would kill me if it were cited all over the place. But there's value in the difference between "something that a private detective or a spy can learn without too much work" and "something that the Googlebot will index seconds after you write it". And that value is going to be worth money to someone, even if Facebook is tempted or compelled to turn away from it.
But there's value in the difference between "something that a private detective or a spy can learn without too much work" and "something that the Googlebot will index seconds after you write it". And that value is going to be worth money to someone, even if Facebook is tempted or compelled to turn away from it.
This is a well made point. The difference between what can be learned and what can be learned easily/through happenstance is very significant.
It is hard to hide something form some truly determined to find it out, but that is very different from broadcasting it to the world.
That's dangerous. The problem with bubbles is that they distort your view of reality. You do crazy things, like build out a big company with big infrastructure that is out of proportion to your primary use case. Or chase other people's business models instead of your own because you become addicted to the glare of the relentlessly-moving spotlight.
If, indeed, Facebook can't provide privacy while staying in business, that's a very exciting piece of business news. It means that somebody else -- one site, two sites, hundreds of sites, perhaps something that doesn't look like a site at all -- is going to inherit Facebook's use case, the one that built their business: socializing with a select group of friends without excessive privacy concerns. [1]
To work, fellow nerds!
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[1] Yeah, I know, little or nothing that you type can ever be guaranteed to be truly private. Digital data is too hard to hide and too easy to spread. I strive not to type anything that would kill me if it were cited all over the place. But there's value in the difference between "something that a private detective or a spy can learn without too much work" and "something that the Googlebot will index seconds after you write it". And that value is going to be worth money to someone, even if Facebook is tempted or compelled to turn away from it.