I came across a post this morning on Jonathan Lane's blog that used the word "Facebook" and the term "jumped the shark" in the same sentence. Lane's basic premise is that while Facebook is great at accomplishing its core directive of connecting people, it sucks at all the peripheral services it offers and doesn't have a good enough way to integrate with higher quality outside services to satisfy the needs of a poweruser.
"Facebook is pretty good for the beginners, but fails for people like me," wrote Lane. "There is no way that I’m going to upload photos to two separate places. Having to choose between Flickr and Facebook? Sorry Facebook, you lose. Having to pick between responding to comments on my imported Facebook notes, or comments posted on my blog? Sorry Facebook, you lose again."
Facebook does many of things we do on other sites. It has notes, which are kind of like blogging, but they're nowhere near as robust as Wordpress or MovableType. It has status updates, which are kind of like Twitter, but they're one-way and don't have an archive. It has photos and videos, but nothing nearly as well-made as Flick or YouTube, or Picasa or Vimeo. It has events, which are probably as easy to use as Upcoming, but not nearly as complete when it comes to an inventory of actual things to do. In short, Facebook does a lot of things, but besides being an address book, it doesn't do anything else really, really well.
That's why powerusers generally rely on so many other outside services. The hype surrounding FriendFeed over the past couple of weeks makes it evident that the early adopter set, at least, have their attention spread out over a large number of sites. They're not content with "good enough" tools at Facebook, they want the best tools at whatever site offers them.
What Facebook could really use, then, is a little bit of FriendFeed (which is ironic given that the activity stream idea FriendFeed is based on was pushed to the mainstream by Facebook). Facebook has an application platform that allows users to access their data from outside sites and bring it into Facebook, but so far the integration isn't all that great. Facebook could benefit a lot from more tightly integrating outside services. Allowing people to populate their photo albums from Flickr, for example, or replace the standard status updates with a full Twitter stream, would keep people on the site for longer periods of time. Ideally, any service you bring into Facebook would be read/write -- meaning you can write to it from within Facebook as well.
Doing that could make Facebook a real killer app, and if they also let users customize their News Feeds to include all that outside data they brought in, it would nip lifestreaming startups in the bud. That would make Facebook a true Internet operating system, and help users to focus attention in a single place. Of course, data portability and OpenID would make that task of integrating with outside sites a heck of a lot easier. And in order to do something like this, Facebook would also need to make users free to export their data back out of Facebook just as easily as they brought it in.
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all Read/WriteWeb posts
While reading this article, and I was struck that it probably was relevant to a social networking site, HumanBook, which has over 250 million profiles of people, including you, your friends, classmates and relatives.
The HumanBook is a mutually managed people directory. People list their own real-life connections, and other connections they have awareness of, to create a lifelong network. The network houses the connections, and then the collaboratively updated address book nurtures them, assuring that they need never be lost. HumanBook is the tool that will allow you to cherish and sustain all of the connections of your whole life. So if you're interested, go to http://www.HumanBook.com and find your profile today!
Posted by: John | March 19, 2008 1:10 PMI couldn't agree more! Facebook does some really cool things but why would I ever upload my photos or videos twice? We saw this as a problem for Facebook and create two killer apps that pull in your Flickr photos and YouTube videos. Check us out, and hopefully this makes your lives a little bit easier! http://zuport.zu.com
Posted by: Cory | March 19, 2008 1:52 PMI agree and think that this movement could also be applied to one of the more useless yet strangely popular parts of Facebook -- groups.
I'm continually mystified by the number of Facebook groups that are created and joined but that have close to zero activity.
On the one hand, some of them are pretty funny. And I certainly understand the appeal of using them as a way to spread jokes or advertise hipster-ness.
But in order for Facebook groups to be useful, I think that they need to organize less around member posted comments (and photos) and more around content aggregation -- the ability to pull in blog posts, flickr streams (based on tags), Last.fm plays, YouTube videos, delicious bookmarks, etc.
If Facebook groups could provide an (easily accomplished) aggregation of great content (including through the adding of applications to a group page that specifically did that) then they could be a great way to keep users in the site.
Think of a band fan group where reviews, videos, Flickr photos (taken at concerts) and blog posts could all be automatically added by the officers (or even the members) uploading photos to Flickr, favorite-ing YouTube! videos and tagging album and concert reviews in delicious.
Posted by: William Morris | March 19, 2008 2:15 PMYour point is well taken. To further add to the irony, however, one service that *is* very well integrated into facebook is actually friendfeed. I don't know if you've tried this yet, but if you add the friendfeed app in facebook and then click on the "see all" link on your profile it takes you to the app page where you have a full fidelity friendfeed interface embedded into facebook. You can directly comment, search, etc... from it. So, ironically FaceBook does have a "little" friendfeed (it's kinda smallish, trapped in an iframe).
Posted by: Todd McKinney | March 19, 2008 10:04 PM"Facebook does many of things we do on other sites."
Yes, but within the context of our social graph. I think many "power users" misunderstand the appeal of Facebook: It's all about the social graph. The difference between Facebook's services and outside sites is the integration with the people I call my friends.
Having to choose between Flickr and Facebook for Christmas party photos I only want to share with people I know and trust? Sorry Flickr, you lose. Having to pick between writing a personal note on Facebook or setting up logins for my friends on my blog? Sorry blog, you lose.
Don't get me wrong, I think Facebook could definitely improve and gain new users/activity if they better integrated with outside services as you propose. But I've often found tech bloggers who are so involved in public content distribution and public online services seem to miss why millions of average users love Facebook and use it every day. Plenty of people want to share content only with their social graph, and that's something Facebook does very well in many ways. They don't often need all the features of a Flickr or Vimeo - they just need a simple, effective way to share content and interact. And there, Facebook wins.
Posted by: theharmonyguy | March 20, 2008 5:54 AMI don’t think I want facebook to do what friendfeed is doing… I like having a separate single place to keep track of it all. I already have too much on fb.
I just started my friendfeed account, and have been having a ton of fun…
http://webpoet.wordpress.com/2008/03/20/i-just-started-my-friendfeed/
TWL
Posted by: Sally Wu | March 20, 2008 7:48 AMI know this is an FB orientated story, but I thought the need for ALL Social Networking sites to integrate 'feeds' or 'life streams' was a done deal. Making sure there is embeddable space for users to display their fave stream type seems a sensible approach.
Posted by: paullmf | March 23, 2008 10:07 PM