Taking Issue with Sean Parker on Twitter, Facebook & Google
I came across a recent TechCrunch article titled ”Sean Parker: Twitter/Facebook Will Soon Dominate The Web - Not Google” summarizing Sean Parker’s (Founders Fund, Facebook co-founder) speech at Web 2.0 summit yesterday.
I took issue with two points that he made (as presented in TC):
Parker noted that data portability is a red herring. Data portability is easily solved by converters and adapters, he said. Facebook has of course been criticized for being much more closed with regards to its data than many of the other social networks. In Parker’s view, it would seem that not only is this not a bad thing, but it will help them dominate, because it will force other users to join them. That’s something that I would bet a lot of people believe, but it’s interesting to hear someone like Parket be ballsy enough to say that.
It’s not hard to agree with Parker that keeping user data locked within Facebook’s walled garden will help Facebook “dominate.” In fact, we might also agree that AOL did a great job of locking users in and consequently “dominating.” Or that Microsoft successfully “dominated” by boxing out all competition (read: innovation).
Tim O’Reilly will beat you over the head with the argument that companies reap long term success only when they create more value than they capture. Parker might dismiss data portability as a “red herring” but to do so is to do Facebook’s user a great disservice. If Facebook turns its focus to maintaining market share instead of delivering the best possible experience to its users, a younger, nimbler (and yes, generally more open) competitor will eventually emerge, and that familiar cycle of creative destruction will begin again.
To be clear, he thinks Google will stay huge and relevant, but it’s dominance will go down because collecting data is less valuable than connecting people, he said.
I often read about how old school Google is because it isn’t social. Let’s recall that Google page rank is the original manifestation of the social web. Building a system of relevance on user reference places user exchange at the center of search. If Google is asocial then Facebook is just a profile directory.
Furthermore, I don’t think that the difference between Google and Facebook is collecting data vs. connecting people. I would argue that data is value in both cases. The difference is the form of that data.
Link data and activity data are two sides of the same coin: user exchange. If Google’s success is any indication, the potential for monetizing Facebook’s activity data is immense, but the case for that potential to exceed Google has yet to be proven.
