Is this the decade of Facebook?

Published by Robi | Filed under Brain Buster, Ramble

The 1990s went to Microsoft. The 2000s went to Google. Could this be Facebook’s turn?

Twenty years ago chat rooms were considered geeky. Ten years ago your friend with his own web page was a nerd (if the friend was female she was in adult entertainment). Now thanks to Facebook, I stay in touch with people I work with, people I went to high school with, people I used to work with, old college friends and share all kinds of random thoughts every day.

Who (other than the “alleged 400 million” members) made them the most influential social media mechanism on the internet? Did they earn that distinction? Did the stumble upon it? What happened to AOL being the devil? Is NetZero still free after all their Super Bowl ads? What happened to Jabber? Is a threaded email really social media? Did Facebook execs secretly spike the punch at internal Myspace and other social networking (such a two year old term) company meetings that made them all less intelligent? I have no idea. However, I am certain that I no longer care. I do know that Facebook is the most influential social media mechanism on the internet and we have to deal with them (or at least be aware of them).

The past several days have been a feeding frenzy for avid bloggers with an opinion on this topic. As opposed to throwing my oversized hat into the ring of opinions, I deemed it best to high light the works of others I hold in high esteem (this way I can point the finger at them if things turn out differently even though I agree with them right now).

• Hooray for Chuck Schumer / US Senate for weighing in and Jason Kincaid @ TechCrunch for summarizing it with “Senators Call Out Facebook On ‘Instant Personalization’, Other Privacy Issues“
• Cheers to Pete Cashmore @ Mashable for keeping it real with “Nobody Can Stop Facebook Because Nobody Understands Facebook”
• Thanks to John Sutter @ CNN for keeping it simple with “What you should know about Facebook’s changes”