[p2p-research] faroo p2p search + facebook quitters

[Ryan Lanham]

Facebook (and for that matter the whole Apple process) is selling ease.
People miss the point.  What Facebook has is little different than what
anyone can have on their own webpage...that was even more true of MySpace.
The trouble with tinkering worlds is that ease of use and access are not
cool.  Just as actually working on real problems is not cool for political
theorists.  So it creates a huge market opening because people want ease.
Apple's complete strategy is complex apps with ease.  Anybody...a
neophyte...can do it.  Facebook is the same.  For that matter, Wikipedia is
the same.

Accessibility was the key.  There is something still perverse in the
tinkering world that loathes everybody playing.  I think it makes something
less "techy."   Part of this is political.  People want only their friends
to be in their club, and part of it is market-oriented in that people want
rare skills.  So they build fragmented units.  Again, that creates the
authentic market opening for easy linkage along minimally complex lines.
Giving people what they want at price they are willing to pay (often free or
seemingly so) is the definition of markets.

Those who don't get ease want to build "e-harmony" for their cause.  Those
who get ease are readily inclusive of any model or form.  When they are not
(e.g. Apple with porn) it generally causes almost more problems than the
stance is worth.   Every exclusion creates a incremental perhaps exponential
cost in terms of success.

Ryan

On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 3:03 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi sepp, I wonder if you could look into this:
>
> (I would also appreciate your comments on danah boyd's critique of facebook
> quitters ... see
> http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/05/23/quitting-facebook-is-pointless-challenging-them-to-do-better-is-not.html)
>
> Michel
>
>
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