danah boyd Is Confused By Facebook Success

Cousin danah is puzzled:

[from apophenia: confused by Facebook]

I am utterly confused by the ways in which the tech industry fetishizes Facebook. There's no doubt that Facebook's F8 launch was *brilliant*. Offering APIs and the possibility of monetization is a Web 2.0 developer's wet dream. (Never mind that I don't know of anyone really making money off of Facebook aside from the Poker App guy.) But what I don't understand is why so much of the tech crowd who lament Walled Gardens worship Facebook. What am I missing here? Why is the tech crowd so entranced with Facebook?

I agree it's odd. But, as I pointed out in a recent post, The Architecture of Sociality: Building In Openness, the path to openess requires collections of independent applications to start sharing common services. Until that happens, openness is an abstraction, and one that has basically no traction in the minds of the average user. But the techies, who might know better, are still end users; and the benefits of very large networks override any moral qualms about supporting the growing hegemony posed by Facebook.

Comments

[Alan K]

I agree completely. It shows that good apps win over open apps with techies. Facebook is clean, fast, fun and has mass. It is probably the first social network most techies have actually used and enjoyed -- with friends and all. I doubt many techies really got into myspace.

[Search Any Info]

Well facebook looks so ugly for me. May be I'm an aestetical person? ))