Journal #7

Journal #7

According to Christopher Beam’s article “In Your Face”, Facebook.com is the sleeping giant of social networking sites. Beam’s article comparatively analyzes the web’s most popular social networking sites and comes to the conclusion that if Facebook.com would only add a few truly useful components to it’s already practical and respectably clean interface, well, “The rest of the Internet might as well surrender.” Calling Myspace.com downright creepy and citing the uselessness of Second Life’s large-breasted 3D avatars and make-believe currency, Beam believes that Facebook.com and Myspace.com are already the closest things we have to “virtual worlds.” He believes that the final missing link (one that Facebook.com is quickly discovering) combines the demands of the real world, such as real-time news feeds, email, and instant messaging, with the familiarity and utility of the virtual world. Beam says that with mergers like Yahoo! and Myspace.com on the horizon, Facebook.com would only need to write some truly useful applications for its users spaces to create an unstoppable social networking juggernaut.

Question 1:

Do people really use/care about Facebook and social networking that much?

In a word, HECK YES THEY DO! Facebook.com has 27 million users and has seen a dramatic increase since the release of Facebook Platform.

Question 2:

Who else is capitalizing on this?

Beam adds that even politicians are deciding to use social networking sites like Facebook to promote themselves. My.BarackObama.com can only boast of 70,000 registered users, while on Facebook.com, Thousands of users have downloaded the Obama Facebook application and hundreds of thousands have joined Obama-themed groups.