Zuckerberg’s Garden - Why facebook is doomed to fail

A man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life

- James Allen

I love facebook. I use it at least once a day. It’s easier to know me through facebook than it is to meet me. You’ll know who I’m dating. You’ll learn about my interests and whom my friends are. You’ll see pictures of my life.

Giving away your soul

I dont own any of it. By putting myself up on facebook, I relinquish all rights to owning my digital representation of myself.

That’s not to say that I care right now. The service is compelling. One site with all the information you need to keep up to date with your friends. It makes it easier for everyone that way. All credit to facebook, they do a great job of making their site a compelling place to hang out.

Déjà vu?

I liken Facebook to the Web 2.0 AOL. In the early days of the internet, if you weren’t on AOL, you were nobody. AOL had instant messaging, chat rooms, message boards, content - all the makings of a great social network. That lasted for a little while. Until the openness of the internet provided variety. The service that AOL provided to its customers has been supplanted by the broader web.

Zuckerberg is going down.

Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not in a year, but humans don’t like walled gardens. Humans don’t like being locked in. As cool and as open as facebook apps are, they lock you in.

The opportunity is there to provide the value that facebook does; aggregate user generated content and link it to specific individuals. Spoken plainly - my friends find out about me - both in general and right now.

Making it happen

Friend interaction and aggregation is the main thing missing from Wired’s attempt at replacing facebook using open social tools. We’ll get there eventually, but it will require interactions as simple as facebook using open technologies from multiple vendors.

What would you need to be in place to ditch facebook?

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