Facebook-Related Post Of the Week

  

Social networking is huge business, not only in affluent nations, but developing ones as well. Everyday people often belong to not just one, but 3 or more sites like Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and the new Google+. And speaking of Google+, reviews are decidedly mixed, with some enjoying the group videochat features already available on Twitter app Tinychat and some finding the layout and user-friendliness to be a rehash of Google Wave, which was a monstrous fail.

  But what to do when you're insecure Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg? Well, the little Z has teamed up with Skype to tie-in Skype's videochat service with Facebook. According to advertisers, they love the concept because they believe it will keep people on FB for a longer period of time.  In the demo, Zuckerberg calls it 'awesome' approximately 42 times, but seems to miss the point.

  People go to Facebook because it's Facebook and Skype or amazing dinosaur Yahoo to have private, realtime conversations. Facebook may have boosted most of MySpace's games, but a video option will be a pain in the ass, and here's why:

  I am probably your average Facebook client- I log on a couple of times a day to make sure no family members are ailing, to see who's pregnant, and to make my Scrabble move. Once a year or so, I upload a few pictures of my cat and I post my blog updates on my wall via an app. While I do periodically use the typechat option, it's not a driving force in my social media life. Facebook is a small part of my existence and I'd like to keep it that way, despite what Zuckerberg's advergeeks want.

  So, say I'm checking out some awesome Woodstock footage that my dad has been rad enough to find on the webs and I'm rockin out to Hendrix during my 7.5 Facebook minutes of the day. All of a sudden, 25 people I haven't seen in 2 decades poke me with the Skype doohickey. I will obviously be unamused by the bell interfering with the perfect riff. I will remember the name and source of said video so I can find it elsewhere and get the hell off of Facebook as quickly as possible. I may even hop on my own preloaded Skype or Yahoo and bitch about it to one of my actual friends, put as much aaaarrrrgggghhhhh!! as possible into 140 characters on Twitter, post a rage comic on Reddit, or write a long and winding blog post about it.

  I can understand why Mark Zuckerberg would want an alliance with Skype pending their possible purchase by Microsoft. I am highly aware of how competitive the media marketplace is, but if the original Google Wave  is proof of anything, it's the fact that people don't like drastic fundamental changes to how their toys work. Myspace panicked because of Facebook and sunk their own ship because they couldn't grasp two concepts- 1) that there's allowed to be more than one fish in the sea and 2) trying to be everything to everyone causes the quality of what you were good at to deteriorate.

  Mark Zuckerberg is aware that North American Facebook membership has dropped, but he need not worry. 1 in 8 people who breathe Earth's air use Facebook. This includes all of the babies, blind and elderly, and people who reside in places without running water. 750 million people on our planet use Mark Zuckerberg's social network and it's worth billions and billions of dollars. The only excuse for attempting a tit-for-tat with Google Plus is ego.
  Facebook will only expire if Mark Zuckerberg chases users away, and the Skype invasion might be the one thing that scares me and a whole ton of adults off of the network, and grown-ups are the people who actually buy the products that are advertised.

  In our society, there is no longer a concept of too big to fail, but there might just be a possibility of becoming too big to stay.

  Stay tuned.