what is facebook?

what is facebook?

it's a social network. so what? it's just a social network. we've seen them before. myspace, friendster... the difference is facebook got the college kids hooked and everyone else had to be there where their friends were.

facebook has 800,000,000 users. impressive. it's estimated to be worth $100B when it goes public early next year. impressive. it has the ear of some of the highest rated investment firms and technology companies in the world. impressive. it's founder has dined with the likes of the president of the united states and advised the president of france on it's internet policies. impressive. for the moment.

at any time the value of the company could start the mass migration to the next best thing. it's 800,000,000 users could stop logging in and log into a new service that's cooler, easier, provides a better experience and is the place where everyone else logs into. facebook has to constantly adapt and change to face the competition head to head. when a new service or a competitor provides something as simple as a new look facebook has to follow suit so as not to lose users. it's happened many times in it's existence. sometimes even pissing off some of it's user base.

the end of facebook is inevitable. there's no way it can survive against it's competitors who are always innovating to take away some of it's user base and value.

facebook hasn't found a way to transition from what it is to what it should be. it has mobile apps and some weird thing on set top boxes but it struggles to make them frictionless. people use these apps and set top box set ups because that's where their friends are but they don't like it.

eventually someone will do what facebook hasn't been able to do. most likely it'll be because facebook is an old leviathan that can't change into what it should be to dominate. although they have been able to innovate from days of internet yore they don't have what it takes to innovate further. they are now part of the way the internet... actually who cares about the internet, they are now what social used to be, not what it will be. timeline, it's most recent "innovation" will fail to make facebook social into the future. it's still facebook laid out differently.

for example, the google plus mobile app is so much more than what facebook has done with mobile. it's so much more frictionless. it's so much more integrated into a google user's experience. it's nearly ubiquitous for diehard google users. unfortunately google doesn't have the diehard user base to fully compete with facebook.

another example is diaspora. they're just facebook for pissed off facebook users without the pissed off facebook user's friends.

ultimately none have what it takes to be the future. both are limited at the moment. what is needed is full ubiquity on every lcd/led screen in our personal lives. simple (140 character), social (friends and family), and networking (linkedin) all on every screen for every social purpose. simplesocial.net (simple, social, network). one service, one app, one place to take care of everything on every viewable surface. it'll be a couple-a-three years but facebook is already shopping for a cane because it's getting old and feeling old age set in.

facebook, twitter, linkedin; start making your funeral arrangements. you just can't do what needs to be done.

people are our strength

people are our most valuable resource. it's the policy of any company in western society. so why don't companies show off their people? why do they make their people hide?

companies look for and recruit people in this new social world by creeping a potential candidate's social profile, typically facebook. a photo, whether posted by the individual or tagged by a friend, can end the candidates chances of employment at that company. some employees have even been reprimanded or even "let go" because of a seemingly inappropriate photo.

drinking at a party / bar, barfing in a toilet when drinking too much, taking a hit off a doob... these are all things companies would rather not have in their "cabinets" holding their personnel files.

recently we all learned that even the "great" steve jobs liked the weed and the lsd and the shrooms. he was a complete dick but he brought the world some amazing things. without his complete dedication and foresight the world wouldn't have the innovations in technology we have today. the world wouldn't have the bar set so high.

kary mullis claims that if he weren't taking lsd during his molecular biology research he would not have come up with the innovations that eventually won him the nobel prize.

i'm not saying all people who have taken lsd will win a nobel prize or come up with something so elegant as an ipad, but i am saying people are people. they do good work. they can be very smart and motivated people. dedicated hard working individuals with their priorities straight helping companies like microsoft be people_ready.

it's time for companies to get it straight. good hard working people in all positions sometimes like to go out and get completely wasted. sometimes they barf in garbage cans at 3am. they can be exemplary employees worthy of higher than average wage increases and full bonuses but still come to work monday morning ready to do an outstanding job.

brag about it. celebrate it. companies should have real people working for them not the people you see in the microsoft ad above.

starting a podcast

well i'm finally starting a podcast. with my gf.

they say the cost of entry into the podcast space is low. maybe even $0. but the setting up and sorting out of what is needed to get started costs a lot. researching the pros and cons of a platform to do so is time consuming and leads to opening your wallet.

did you make the right choice based on the availability of services?

most blogging services have a free version but the options available leave you wanting more. bandwidth, storage, tracking your audience... these things cost money and will be valuable as your audience grows.

hardare?

the mic on a laptop works but can be problematic. you'll have to clean up the recording in post using software. or you can buy a mic for $50. even still you have to be in a quiet place and speak into it properly. or you can buy a good highly directional mic for $300+. the sound recorded from a good mic doesn't require as much cleaning up as the free one on your laptop or the $50 one most of us can afford.

and software?

sometimes the answers to this seems obvious but they're not. do you use skype, pamela ($30 or so) and audacity or do you use sound recorder and sit in the same room with a co-host or a guest?

somehow (and quite easily i might add) the cost of entry starts to rise. especially if you want to produce a high quality product with the possibility of having thousands of downloads per episode. the last thing you want to do is disappoint your audience.