@contradevian Posted January 4, 2011 Share Posted January 4, 2011 ... till the bubble bursts. Bubbles can be a good thing. The canal bubble gave is canals, the railway bubbles gave us railways, the internet bubble of the 90's gave us internet infrastructure. The housing bubble gave us ...... well more stripped pine flooring and did wonders for twigs in vase sales I suppose. Its possible Facebook might fail, or be overtaken. Concerns over privacy could easily back fire, but we still have the Facebook technology and infrastucture, or failing that a ton of cheap servers and Cisco switches and routers to be picked up at a bargain price. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thecrashingisles Posted January 4, 2011 Share Posted January 4, 2011 The housing bubble gave us ...... well more stripped pine flooring and did wonders for twigs in vase sales I suppose. And that's the tragedy of it. At a time when ordinary people invested so much capital in housing we had less to show for it than from any other period this century. The housing bubble should have been the time when we saw a massive renewal of our housing stock creating a step-change in the quality of life for the average person. Then at least this giant debt overhang would have served a useful purpose. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cica Posted January 4, 2011 Share Posted January 4, 2011 (edited) I very much doubt Facebook is really worth anything like that. Even with a fraction of that money a few phone manufacturers and mobile networks could create a de-centralised (your phone acting as a server) standard for social media. Done properly even privacy could be addressed somewhat with the manufacturer/network providing the software and network and the data encrypted. Perfectly realistic at some point in the next decade. Right now the mobile networks love Facebook because they're the reason thousands of people signed up to data packages to browse Facebook without using their work computer. Of course the problem is that Facebook already has all the friends lists and relationships of people and no one would sign up to another social network that their friends weren't even on. Well, mobile phones also already have that too in their phone book. Turn your phone on and run your finger down your touch screen which people you want to opt in with. Facebook will never be Google in terms of revenue unless Facebook becomes a search engine itself or successfully integrates something like Bing into it's pages. Unlikely at the moment since Bing is...crap. People on Facebook are there to look at photos. A substantial proportion of people on Google have already got their credit card in their hand to search and make a purchase. Massive difference. Edited January 4, 2011 by cica Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
@contradevian Posted January 4, 2011 Share Posted January 4, 2011 I very much doubt Facebook is really worth anything like that. Even with a fraction of that money a few phone manufacturers and mobile networks could create a de-centralised (your phone acting as a server) standard for social media. Done properly even privacy could be addressed somewhat with the manufacturer/network providing the software and network and the data encrypted. on of people on Google have already got their credit card in their hand to search and make a purchase. Massive difference. Probably a good point and I've noticed people using Facebook to exchange their Blackberry pins to chat away on, and there is the risk that the "cloud" migrates to a more peer 2 peer orientated model running on billions of handhelds and netbooks, rather than more centralised server farms. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.