Tag: walled garden

The Walled Garden that is Facebook

Post ImageSometimes I get too excited about Facebook. I use it every single day, and I think it’s a great tool, but it’s far from perfect. That’s why I read blogs written by people like Jason Kottke, so that I don’t lose perspective completely. Earlier this week, Jason called Facebook the new AOL:

What happens when Flickr and LinkedIn and Google and Microsoft and MySpace and YouTube and MetaFilter and Vimeo and Last.fm launch their platforms that you need to develop apps for in some proprietary language that’s different for each platform? That gets expensive, time-consuming, and irritating.

As it happens, we already have a platform on which anyone can communicate and collaborate with anyone else, individuals and companies can develop applications which can interoperate with one another through open and freely available tools, protocols, and interfaces. It’s called the internet and it’s more compelling than AOL was in 1994 and Facebook in 2007.

He’s so right.

I don’t know if Facebook will end up like AOL has, and it certainly won’t be mailing out CDs anytime soon, but the comparison is still fair.

Walled gardens might seem like a good idea initially, but eventually the walls will crumble.

Read: kottke.org

Social Bookmarking and Walled Gardens

Post ImageBefore the current explosion of social bookmarking sites I became a total del.icio.us fan. It was among the first sites to have the funky URI, it has a very simple and extremely clean interface, and it makes me feel like I am in control. Overall, I have been very happy with it, and I have around 760 items in my bookmarks right now.

I still get the urge to try out some of the other sites though! I never end up taking the plunge however, and I think it’s because I already have so many links in del.icio.us. If there was an extremely easy way to import/export between the services that would be sweet, I’d have no problems! Unfortunately, there isn’t. I mean I could probably write a script that loads everything in del.icio.us and adds it to whatever service I am trying, but that’s not really feasible. I like to code, but I don’t have that kind of time! And yes, testing a new service with all of my existing bookmarks in there is important! If I am going to switch, it had better handle what I already have very well.

I don’t think this problem is limited to social bookmarking either. It’s not like you can export your photos from Flickr to another site with anything close to what I would call “relative ease”. I understand that it would take a lot of work on the part of the development teams to make it a reality, but we aren’t really in an open Web 2.0 world until it happens. And if it’s not going to happen, it would be better if I hosted my own bookmarks and published a standard API that services like del.icio.us could tap into – Web 3.0 maybe 😉

With all the recent talk about demolishing the so-called “wall gardens” of the past, I can’t help but think it’s all a farce.