Open Social, Facebook. They all suck.

Although I use Facebook 2 to 3 times a week and sometimes more, I absolutely hate it. A lot of whoohaa was made about Open Social, but all that will allow you is to develop apps much like Facebook’s apps for a bunch of different platforms without rewriting anything for any specific platform. Nifty.

No, what I’d like is something completely different. I do NOT want to have an obscure Facebook URL (http://www.facebook.com/people/Stii_Pretorius/754367316) to my profile, forcing people who would like to know more about me to register at the god-site, sucking in and exploiting even more people’s shopping habits. I want to be able to see everything about my friends in the one place that really matters to me. This damn site. Well, this one and the other one(s) I have. I want to log into my Wordpress dashboard and poke my friends, send them some private messages, see what their statuses and/or moods are, etc. In other words, I want blogs to interact the way Facebook profiles does, only across the dark cloud and not behind Facebook walls. It does not happen at http://someotherurl.com, but right here on http://stii.za.net. Privacy issues, security, identity theft, spam and all those other nasties would certainly prove to be a challenge, but I’m sure we’ll be fine. We always end up being fine.

This could be where the clever people from DataPortability.org could be very helpful. Surprise, surprise! Even Google, Facebook and the Open Social guys are joining the conversations surrounding the issue of portable standards, according to Read/Write Web. Awesome. Now, somehow, they just need to open up and let my friends go and we can have an even better web. 2008 might just be the best year ever! Will it ever happen? We’ll see. Time will tell.

PS: Photo was taken from the window of a computer hardware store in George.

11 Comments to "Open Social, Facebook. They all suck."

• Henre said: On 01/10/2008 at 7:49 am

  And I want a phone that takes my 3G card and be able to e-mail, skype, browse, upload youtube, gtalk, MSN, flickr, google alerts, blog platform where I can poke my friends, blog, update status, call, skype call, sms, mms, rss reader, some pure ground coffee and a date.

  Nice post. Great idea. Pipe dream?

• absolutwillie said: On 01/10/2008 at 8:06 am

  Awesome idea! (I’d also love Henre’s super-phone.) Of course, I’d want a Zion-class, portable interface…

• Stii said: On 01/10/2008 at 11:01 am

  Definitely a pipe dream. Its not impossible, though. Love the phone idea!

• uno de waal said: On 01/10/2008 at 2:42 pm

  one word: DiSo

• Stii said: On 01/11/2008 at 10:22 am

  Thanks Uno! Looks like an interesting project. Lets hope it picks up speed…

• Chris M said: On 01/11/2008 at 11:32 am

  Great article! I might just pinch that photo for my blog

• Stii said: On 01/11/2008 at 2:10 pm

  @ChrisM Feel free man!

• Charl van Niekerk said: On 01/17/2008 at 5:15 pm

  Sorry only now that I read the comments. Pipe dream? WTF I’m on the verge of having this already!

• Monty said: On 01/23/2008 at 12:17 pm

  I don’t see why it would be a pipe dream. Seriously. Just need someone to do it (don’t see F’n FB doing it though)

• Dizzy Dee said: On 01/24/2008 at 11:45 am

  Facebook has taken the whole world by storm. I doubt another organization is going to achieve the same success….

• stii.za.net » Blog Archive » Facebook chat is about replacing your IM, its about connecting with people in realtime. said: On 04/23/2008 at 9:06 am

  [...] This morning I got a flurry of chats popping up as soon as I opened Facebook. The new chat feature went live. Well, for me it went live this morning as it is the first time i’ve seen it and I’m not a huge Facebook fan. [...]

Spit it out!

Filed in: Social Web, Web 2.0 by: Stii