The Battle Between Google and Facebook

A story at Wired delves into the ongoing struggle between Google and Facebook to establish their competing visions for the future of the internet. "For the last decade or so, the Web has been defined by Google's algorithms — rigorous and efficient equations that parse practically every byte of online activity to build a dispassionate atlas of the online world. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions a more personalized, humanized Web, where our network of friends, colleagues, peers, and family is our primary source of information, just as it is offline. In Zuckerberg's vision, users will query this 'social graph' to find a doctor, the best camera, or someone to hire — rather than tapping the cold mathematics of a Google search. It is a complete rethinking of how we navigate the online world, one that places Facebook right at the center. In other words, right where Google is now." A related article at ReadWriteWeb suggests that while Facebook's member base is enormous, the company hasn't taken advantage of its influence as well as it should have, though the capability for it to do so still exists.

Aardvark

[Mattwolf7]

Sounds like Facebook wants to do something similar to Aardvark - http://vark.com/ [vark.com] Basically you ask a question and it finds people in your "network" and poses the question to them. You get pretty good answers from people around the world.

Re:Hey, has anyone heard from Roland?

[beardz]

http://meta.slashdot.org/story/09/01/09/1456216/Roland-Piquepaille-Dies [slashdot.org]

Militarism and the market.

[delirium of disorder]

Zuckerberg may be the cute face to front Facebook, but we all know that the (only) two other board member's Peter Theil and Jim Breyer are humanists of the highest degree.

Yes! because Thiel's extreme vision of capitalism where corporations control the whole world is 'humanizing'. TheVanguard.Org and 'The Diversity Myth' are humanist projects, not neoconservative? Support for the rich using offshore tax havens...that's the ethical human thing to do!

Jim Breyer's time on the board of Walmart, why, I'm sure he's helping Walmart become more caring, personal, and humane.

Greylock Venture Capital's ties to the CIA are also of no concern, I'm sure.

Can you make money out of friendship? Can you create communities free of national boundaries - and then sell Coca-Cola to them? Facebook is profoundly uncreative. It makes nothing at all. It simply mediates in relationships that were happening anyway.

I think It's pretty insane that people present their personal details in public via social networking. This same type of connectivity could be implemented with end to end encryption, signatures to verify everyone, and secure deletion. Social networks could be a p2p, open source, empowering service. Instead, people just upload their entire lives to the web, and use services run by some of the most extreme right wing members of the ruling class. WAKE THE FUCK UP!

Re:Is facebook going down?

[d4nowar]

For every person that says "I deleted my facebook because I got tired of it," there are about a dozen moms, dads, aunts, uncles, and grandparents just starting one up.

Re:Don't forget Advertisers!

[milas]

Both Hulu and Facebook allow you to thumbs up and thumbs down ads. I know Facebook opens a little AJAX pop up asking for some comments when you thumb down, but I've never actually done it on Hulu to know if it's more than a binary entry. On a related note of better, more watchable ads, Hulu should really increase the variety of ads shown to users. I can't even begin to describe my hatred for the HP TouchSmart PC or Carmax as a result of extensive Hulu watching.