CommuniSphere

Facebook Fatigue

There have been folks in the last few months predicting the end of Facebook, and I can't say I'm a big fan, myself. Someone even coined the term "Facebook Fatigue" to describe what happens when you've accumulated too many 'friends' who are sending you too many unwanted FunWall posts, and you just want out.

For me, Facebook adds very limited value. I have to have a profile, for various reasons, but I almost never visit the site. I don't see the advantage over, say email. Here's how Facebook works, or doesn't, for me:

1. Someone posts a 'funny' or otherwise interesting video on my FunWall
2. Facebook sends me an email telling me someone has just posted on my FunWall
3. I go to Facebook and log in
4. I get to see what was posted on the FunWall

The alternative:

1. Someone sends me an email with a link to a 'funny' or otherwise interesting video on YouTube or any of the other video hosting sites
2. I click the link and view the video

Facebook is not compelling precisely because there is no community. It replaces email with a more cumbersome and much more public way of communicating. Everyone can see what just got posted on my FunWall, often before I do, and regardless of what I think about it. I think that the main reason it is so popular is because it is the closest thing to community that most of us have.

We have become very individualistic, and many of us don't even realise what we've lost. We're now "consumers" rather than citizens. One is simply a tiny and replaceable cog in a giant machine of endless, wasteful, and ultimately unsatisfying consumption. (No wonder everyone in our society seems addicted to something.) The other is an integral and vital part of the very meaningful communities of our cities, provinces, countries, and even world. Which would you rather be?

Facebook is in no danger of disappearing - yet. And there are many people who are afraid of joining communities now, because one has to be accepted into a community, and one has to get to know people and let them know you. We have to accept each other, and that's something we really are forgetting how to do in a hurry.

However, I hope and expect that people will return to real communities. There are larger social forces pushing us in that direction, and we're hard-wired that way, so I see it as only a matter of time. As that happens, Facebook will be in trouble. And, if someone wants to send me a "funny" or interesting video, they can just send me an email.

YouTube + Google = Nothing much?

Google paid $1.6B for YouTube, despite the fact that YouTube had minimal earnings - certainly nowhere remotely close to justifying the purchase price. Google clearly wanted the dominant video hosting service, but as time has passed, it has become obvious that Google had no decent strategy to turn YouTube into a moneymaker - and still doesn't. They bought YouTube because it was so big and popular, and have been trying to figure out the money part ever since.

Part of the problems is that research shows that pre-rolls, those incredibly annoying ads that you must endure before you can watch the video you actually came to see, cause 70% of people to click away. It is unlikely that Google will go this route...except, possibly, for videos streamed by other sites, from YouTube.

To explain: YouTube recently opened up their API to allow anyone to stream from YouTube, without embedding the YouTube media player. (Streamslice was already doing this, but YouTube's release made this smoother and more reliable.) YouTube did this, I am sure, to maintain market share. They want everyone to use YouTube, not one of the other 200+ video hosting sites. However, they might also want to treat the external streams differently than those viewed on YouTube. That is, they could insert ads and other annoyances in the external streams so that watching on YouTube is preferable.

YouTube is experimenting with text ads that cover the bottom portion of the video, and that you can click to close. Unless the ad is adding value, it seems likely that most people will do just that.

YouTube/Google is in a tough spot. As video becomes both more common and more of a commodity, viewers are not going to want to pay to watch, either in the form of cash or in time because they must view ads. With the rise of sites that allow video uploads to multiple sites, it becomes very easy to broadcast your video not just to YouTube, but to five, or ten, or twenty other video hosting sites.

As that becomes more common, how does YouTube get people to watch videos on YouTube, where presumably the advertising is? And if people won't go to the ads, then the ads must come to them - and that so far has proven difficult to do without driving away viewers.             

The Power of Communities

Online communities are nothing new - remember geocities? They're still going, actually. The idea was to allow anyone to create a site, and it works. Google groups are another example, but of community-by-email.

What's lacking still, though, is people coming together consistently for a greater purpose, but that is changing. Millions of people who protested the U.S. invasion of Iraq before it happened...and then the U.S. invaded anyway, so a lot of people thought the protest was a failure. It didn't prevent the invasion, but it did start something.

Since then, a lot of other things have happened, like Barack Obama and Ron Paul raising many millions more in donations than their opponents, and mostly in small amounts from individual donors - not from special interest groups or corporations. Or the Anonymous protests against Scientology that has those folks on the run - and powerless to stop a group that is, well anonymous, and that is only telling the truth.

Most recently, a group of freedom lovers at Reddit.com contributed over $4,000 to a fund to buy flowers for Helen Thomas, the reporter who recently had the guts to question the contradiction between the American President's statements and actions on torture.

People are starting to get the hang of organizing via the Internet. As the next generation of communities arrive, and yes, we do hope to be one of those, the power will return to the people. And it's about time.