Steven Fry’s article in the Guardian raises some interesting points:
For what is this much-trumpeted social networking but an escape back into that world of the closed online service of 15 or 20 years ago? Is it part of some deep human instinct that we take an organism as open and wild and free as the internet, and wish then to divide it into citadels, into closed-border republics and independent city states? The systole and diastole of history has us opening and closing like a flower: escaping our fortresses and enclosures into the open fields, and then building hedges, villages and cities in which to imprison ourselves again before repeating the process once more. The internet seems to be following this pattern.
So is Facebook the new AOL? Certainly, it, and social networking sites like it, have created a closed world that seems antithetical to the free-for-all of the web. In a different way, Wikipedia is an enclave unto itself, although its currency is intellectual rather than social.
My own feeling is that sites like Facebook are a significant phase in the evolution of the web, but they are essentially transitional. What it, and other so-called Web 2.0 sites such as Flickr, YouTube and so on, offer that is so different from what went before, is empowering users to contribute content and create networks without needing technical expertise. Where I think the Facebook model is limited is its closed nature; exactly what Steven Fry is talking about.
What will enable the next opening of the flower? It’s too early to tell just yet, but projects like OpenSocial may show the way. The future is not about specific sites, but about services and standards.
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