Last Monday on the Metro, I read about Sir Tim Berners-Lee's remarks on Scientific American that 'Facebook is a threat to the Web'. I believe the news has also been covered extensively elsewhere, like the Guardian, CNet, ReadWriteWeb and more.
First of all, allow me to acknowledge the amount of sensationalism that most of these articles seem to project from TBL's article. I'm quite confident that Facebook's decision not to open up their data outside their own enclosed databases will not cause a complete meltdown of the Web.
Secondly, I think this is a classic conundrum that's pertinent for Web Science. The way I see it, this is a battle between technology vs people, and allow me to explain why.
Tim mentioned that the Web "was built on egalitarian principles and because thousands of individuals, universities and companies have worked, both independently and together ... to expand its capabilities based on those principles." Very commendable, but I think the article is missing one pertinent point: the crux of the matter is that we're working with individuals, universities and companies. I think it is very naive to assume that everyone will continuously work inside this macro environment carrying such egalitarian principles; not everyone is as nice as Tim is!
My first thought after reading this was that if the article advocated what is essentially a free market of data, where all the data in the world can be accessed by anyone (with permission, of course), then wouldn't that lead to capitalism, not unlike today's modern-world economy? In a free market, everything is tethered to pricing, supply and demand. Despite the misgivings of Facebook, there is a huge demand for what it does, and given this high demand, Facebook has every right to raise its so-called 'price', which in this context could be construed as the lack of openness of our data; once we're sucked in, we're sucked in for life (so to speak!).
I'm well aware of Tim's passion for opening up the silos of information that every big online company seems to be building, but I do feel that the article's message is somewhat contradictory. The article vouches for openness to help accelerate future innovations to grow, but surely people adopt these innovations because of their relative buy-ins? I join Facebook because my friends are there, and I use Twitter so I can follow people I find interesting. The beauty of living in an open and free market of the Web is that I have the power to choose. I used to be on Friendster, and all my friends used to be on it too, but at some point we've all migrated enmass over to Facebook. Back then we made the conscious choice that Facebook was better than Friendster, hence the jump. I believe that it doesn't matter whether Facebook's system is open or not; I believe at some point, when people start realizing that Facebook's existing framework is no longer adequate, then another will emerge, and people will jump enmass to that too. Whether the new system is open or not is not the issue, it's about what you can do with the system that matters.
My question is, what's the buy-in for users to use open-source projects like GnuSocial and Diaspora as compared to Facebook, especially if all my friends are only on Facebook? What's the buy-in for people to label every single relationship they've got into RDF triples? People adopt things because of what these things can offer to them. Selling the idea that you should adopt something because it'll help the Web become more open and 'it's the right thing to do' seems to be a little bit utopian if you ask me. Unless, of course, you're nice like Tim Berners-Lee!
Ultimately, I think what the article is really trying to promote is not an open market but socialism :D
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