I'll say it again... Facebook is a Communications Platform

Alley Insider is still focused on Facebook selling marketing data which I think will scare away users:

"Here's what Facebook should do instead. First, extend Facebook Connect to online retail stores. Second, analyze users' spending behavior and activity on Facebook, make that data anonymous and sell it to marketers. Third, turn on personal ads and charge more than the New York Times does -- about $48/week."

The personals idea could generate cash for them, but it still is putting a barrier between people connecting (ie. you have to pay in order to see someone's profile). I just do not think it is in the spirit of the service. People are allowed to ask anyone to connect and People are allowed to accept any connection. At what point does Facebook want to get in the way of that process?

Uninterrupted, private, spam-free communications... that is the value Facebook offers. They provide free, light-weight web communications and should expand into further, premium communications - Video Calls, VoIP and Mobile.

Facebook.... business model revisited

Two recent posts at the Alley Insider about facebook have piqued my interest. The first was about Facebook running out of money because its advertising revenues are not tracking to expectations. The second suggests a business model of packaging up the user data and selling it to marketers.

I wrote a comment on the first saying:

"Fundamentally, Facebook is about communication, not commerce. They should position themselves as the future of all personal communications - web sharing, email, IM, VOIP, video VOIP, etc. and relentlessly pursue communications excellence and market dominance."

My post was panned by other commentators, but I still firmly believe that the fundamental function and benefit of Facebook is that it is a better mousetrap for communications. The resulting implication is that advertising or data research revenue models, will hurt their business in the long run because they are not customer centric solutions. The first will cause pesky interruptions and distractions to communications and the second, will breed intense distrust in the user base about the privacy of their communications.

So what should Facebook do? They should offer two services. The free service is the service as it exists today - chat, email, feeds. The paid service should be a complete VoIP telecommunications service supporting voice, video and file sharing for consumers in the home and on mobile. The biggest benefit of using Facebook's communication platform is that only trusted people can reach you. Not everyone you know is on Facebook yet, but a sufficient amount of scale has been reached now so that most of Facebook's users have 30% of their general network and 60% of their primary network connected already.

Let's run the numbers:
Assume 10% of Facebook's 55MM users upgrade to the paid service. If that paid service is offered at $10/month (and replaces your home line and potentially mobile), the resulting yield would be 5.5MM users paying $120/year for a complete communications solution that has no telemarketers. 2.75MM x $60/year = $660M revenue. Not a $15B business yet but on its way.

Would you pay $10/month to Facebook if it would replace your mobile and home line? I would. Especially because no telemarketers could reach me.

Proposition 8: A loss for everyone

Fundamentally, a constitution has two core purposes: 1. To establish the rules for how the government works, and 2. To establish the undeniable rights of the citizens.

Proposition 8 neither establishes rules for how government works and it certainly does not establish undeniable rights. Worse yet, the constitution is now a document that explicitly takes away rights. That is so, so disappointing.

I am not sure if the Supreme Court can rule a State Constitution unconstitutional, but I imagine (and hope) that is where this is headed.

Dear Google: Is this evil?

Search for 'chrome' on Google and consider if the results are 'relevant'. The top 10 listings predominantly relate to Google's own product named 'Chrome'. I suppose the most egregious issues are the wikipedia listing cited and the tiny 'definition' link in the top right. They both link to descriptions of Google Chrome. Hmm...

Microsoft's Live.com search actually has similarly skewed results for 'windows' but has a much more diverse set of listings for 'chrome' including a more appropriate Wikipedia listing and a series of websites including 'chrome.com' which was omitted from Google's top 10.

So is anyone being evil? I doubt it. Google Chrome and Microsoft Windows just happen to be the most popular sites out there for those words right now. It is a good demonstration of how difficult it is to automatically distill from billions of pages the 10 most accurate results for a single word phrase. It is an equally powerful demonstration that the top listings are the most popular; not necessarily the most correct. So while no one is being evil, remember that while Google is in the lead today, there are certainly opportunities for all parties to improve.

Chrome vs. Firefox: Round 1

For the past 2 months, I have used Google Chrome as my primary web browser. I have been a fan of it mostly, but today my primary browser changes to Firefox. Here are the reasons why:

• Does not work with my.Live.com,
• Unexpected outages where audio fails and browser must be restarted,
• YouTube videos do not play correctly (they stop playing at 2 seconds and have no audio),
  
• Issues with other Flash video players and Silverlight crashing the browser or not playing,
• If I switch my display between projector, external monitor or laptop screen, I need to restart Chrome to resize the browser window,
  
• Homepage too addictive.

The last one is a low blow I suppose but I like the web's variety and my typical homepage is my.Live.com where I have 50 RSS feeds delivering me continually updated content. With Google Chrome, I could not access Windows Live and ultimately my browsing habits were reduced 80% to just the 10 'most popular' sites. It made the internet boring. [I'm sure there is some sort of add-on or customization I could do, but why do I need to try harder? I'm the customer right?]

The final straw was that Google Chrome would not render Thrivepoint.com due to a Wordpress redirect. Lame. I'm switching back to Firefox for a while to see if I miss Chrome or can manage without it.

A word on Internet Explorer: It is too slow. Defaults to opening new windows instead of tabs. The tool bars take up almost 1/4 of the screen (I want to see the whole website without needing to know to hit 'F11'!). I do use it everyday though: It is the only browser where Web-based Outlook access is 'premium'. (Note: Thrivepoint is on Google Apps, but one of my clients is on Outlook). So I use it but for nothing else except working with that client's email.

10/31/0 UPDATE: Day one is complete and I do not miss Chrome, was actually able to listen to last.fm, view YouTube videos and read all of my RSS feeds on my.Live.com. Firefox 1, Chrome 0.