MediaVidea: Is Facebook blinded by hype?

Friday, September 07, 2007

Is Facebook blinded by hype?

Danah Boyd, who earlier wrote about the class divisions among social networking sites (Facebook vs. Myspace), now writes how she is confused by recent actions taken by the currently hot social site, and I agree with her.

The site is making far too many decisions in a very short time frame, which I think may be destabilizing for the huge user base in the long run.

The Facebook guys seem to be after daily media headlines instead of providing a stable user environment.

I don't like the lights in my living room changing every day. I don't want a new circuitry every day.

Facebook has been taken in by the media spiel of being the Google-beater and so it is doing all it can, the IPO clock running all the time.

There are dangers of overreaching. It took Google almost a decade to reach where it is today. But the A-listers want to be validated ASAP or their punditry is worth zilch.

My hunch is that the web 2.0 gurus are sad because we have seen just one billion dollar deal (Youtube) in the current Web 2.0 boom versus so many during the earlier bubble, including one billion dollar + deal that made Mark Cuban the 'Enterpreneur/Guru' he is today. Does any one remember Broadcast.com? Much money is being made in the Silicon Valley on the strength of PR savvy and hucksterism than anything else.

Danah says,

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?