[UFO Chicago] Arcticle: Tim Berners-Lee: Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality

[Brian Sobolak]

On Fri, November 26, 2010 12:33 pm, Matthew T. Gibbs wrote:
> <http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=long-live-the-web>
>
> Seems like we talked about some of this at a recent meeting.  Facebook
> especially would like nothing more than to have you not leave their site,
> ever.
>  They apparently are rolling in e-mail now, too.
>

Everyone who is quite successful goes through a hubris phase where they
think they are going to either "redo" email or calendaring.  Email is so
useful, it's become a burden.  (And as I've mentioned before, I find
Facebook/LinkedIn/Ning etc useful in so far as they maintain pointers to
email addresses rather than me having to bother to do a real email
system.)  As soon as they announce they are going to offer a great new way
to "redo" scheduling, expect the company to fail in 5 years.  I've yet to
see that pattern broken.  (cf Netscape, Novell)

But the point TBL makes is pretty valid -- there is always the temptation
by companies & governments to wall off part of the web for their own gain.
 I find it amazing that Facebook have gotten companies to advertise for it
rather than their own brand ("go visit Honda on facebook!")

Perhaps the utility of a uniform UI for the web is useful?  I don't know. 
But I figure Facebook has 3-4 years to run into the point where it becomes
more commercial and less useful for people.  Perhaps at the next meeting
we should discuss if it will still be useful in 2015.

brian


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