RSS feeds? They're building a product for the masses. They just want to log in and connect with friends, share with them, and gawk at pictures of their friends. "Open" doesn't mean in the neckbeard sense. "Connected" isn't about how many protocols they support. Building RSS support would be a distraction. They have support for applications that could probably give you that -- I'm not sure because I've never wanted it.
As Zuck said in Time Magazine, "Open means having access to more information, right? More transparency, being able to share things and have a voice in the world. And connected is helping people stay in touch and maintain empathy for each other, and bandwidth."[1]
Complaining about Facebook being a walled garden is a valid point. But complaining that it's doublethink is not.
1: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2...
Okay, so there's more openness and transparency within that walled garden, and that's why it's not doublethink, gotcha.
"Open" just "doesn't mean what I think it means", which is a perfectly valid thing to say, while it would of course invalid to claim "open means something else than you or Zuckerberg seem to think".
And that is relevant how, exactly? Even if it was: 6B people are NOT using it.
Show me a service that's connected more people that hasn't been around for more than 20 years and not named "the Internet."
The greatest value FB brings is making it easier to connect and share (ie. be open) with others and 1B people derive enough value in that to come back on a regular basis. That's the point.
Which they would be doing anyway if FB didn't exist. FB to them is convenience, nothing more. Many of them probably think that FB is "the Internet", just as many AOL users thought that in the 90's. They are only "connected" inside the walled garden; they have no idea of all the things that are outside it.
Yes, it is a convenience... Much like email is a convenience over snail mail and Face Time is a convenience over meeting in person. Arguably the car is a "convenience" over the horse.
Discounting the breakthrough in technology that spawned the term "social networking" doesn't really help your position.
AOL may be a defunct company but in their hey day they brought millions of people online. They deserve more than your mockery.
Yes, AOL in its heyday brought lots of people online--and made them think that going through AOL was the only way to get online. Facebook has brought a lot of people social networking--and has made them think that allowing Facebook to monetize their private information is the only way to do social networking. They are encouraging people to choose short-term convenience at the expense of long-term control over their own data and their own online lives.
My point is that saying "lots of people use Facebook" is not the same thing as saying "Facebook is doing things that are good for its users, or the Internet, or society, all things considered". Same for s/Facebook/AOL/.
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