seanmonstar

You see, we’ve come to define “social” in unintentional Orwellian double-speak. “Social” has come to mean the exact opposite of what it’s meant for centuries. Instead of actual interaction and communication, we define “social” as once- or twice-removed ego validation through button-clicking.

Ding.

If that’s true, the most fascinating thing to me about this invitation is that it mentions Android at all.

Indeed. The phrasing “New Home on Android” makes me think of a Facebook themed launcher, or otherwise some sort of new app that replaces the current Facebook app.

As we all venture further and further into the depths of the internet we find people that share our interests. Lots of them, actually. Letting these people — people you look up to or share interests with or share careers with — curate the content you see starts to make more sense than letting your great aunt Sally run the show.

This sums up why we always want something besides Facebook. We want to see content from people who are experts in the topics we like, not from people we get along with who happen to be physically located near us.

I’ve always thought it’d be awesome if Google could use it’s huge amount of data to make search results more powerful and tailored to us. This is a step in that direction.

And yet, what’s the incentive to do this over the much larger install base of Facebook Connect? Also, looking at the documentation, it’s still easier (and more inclusive!) to just use Persona.

Interesting trend that Tim Carmody notices:

Facebook, effectively, becomes the new Yahoo, but something closer to what Yahoo, or AOL before that, was before the rise of Google.

It is interesting to think about how when the web was starting, we all used AOL and Yahoo as launching points to other parts of the web. Eventually, those things died, and we went straight to the URL bar. However, for most non-geeks, it definitely looks like the trend will reverse, and people will go to Facebook first, and then elsewhere on the internet as they find links.

Sencha came along and showed Facebook the right way to use HTML5.

James Whittaker, an ex-Googler:

I couldn’t even get my own teenage daughter to look at Google+ twice, “social isn’t a product,” she told me after I gave her a demo, “social is people and the people are on Facebook.”

It’s frustrating that Google+ is actually a better product; the web app has a better design, Hangouts are a cool addition, and the mobile app is far faster and less buggy than Facebook’s turd. Still, being a better product isn’t enough. Facebook wins, not by being the best, but by simply having everyone already on it.

Competition could exist if social networks could communicate between each other, because then it would be all about who could make the experience better. Yet, as much as everyone knows competition is a good thing, no one ever wants competition against their own product.

Dan Frommer points out the issue with Facebook Mobile:

The more immediate problem, I’d say, is that Facebook’s mobile product is rather boring today.

Many claim that it’s terrible because it’s a WebView. That’s non-sense. Twitter is native, and just as boring, UX-wise. People could do some really fun, interactive stuff with JavaScript and transitions. Why don’t they?