Or is Facebook, Twitter MySpace and the like nothing other than the blogosphere in a slightly different guise?

- What does it mean for those of us who want something more out of cyberspace than friend requests (’uhm… didn’t I date her or something back in 1996…?’) or casting our avatars in the pot with those of supposedly like minded strangers in support of or objection against some cause in a ‘group’ while trying to avoid getting drawn into the bickering that lurks in the associated discussion forums and ‘walls’.

(And allowing your psyche to sink even deeper into denial about the realisation that there must be more you can do to make a positive contribution to the world.)

Depending on your stance, online social networking services are either the blogosphere grown up and supercharged to mass-consumption-grade culture or a watered-down sorry excuse for the real thing, or maybe something in between.

As vague as the boundaries are becoming one can draw some interesting distinctions. The first that comes to mind, to my mind at least, is the issue of ownership and control. What you can and can’t do and what value you can get out of the process.

To my mind, the blogosphere is essentially the domain of individuals claiming and working their own little – and sometimes not so little – plots of cyber real estate.

The world of blogging used to be unspoilt frontiers country, and in some ways perhaps still is, but it is getting damn hard not to notice the sprawling arrays of lego-set-like apartment blocks of user-generated content, the thinly veiled silos of at least potentially ‘monetizable’ eyeballs.

But it may be that the competition is a good thing for the blogoshere.

When you sign up to Facebook you agree to use it for your personal “non-commercial” purposes. You might get away incorporating some paying links in some of your personal content but I suspect anything overtly commercial will get you in a spot of hot water. The exception to this being if you have what it takes to develop an application to plug into the Facebook APIs. (but you better play nice!)

In that case the Facebook Developer terms forbids you from showing any ads except on the application canvas pages – which to Facebook’s credit is a relatively fair deal – but allows significantly less fluidity than when you roll-your-own somewhere out in the ferral regions of hyperspace under your own, memorably pithy domain name.

None the less, me thinks that this approach seen in the light of very iinteresting facts and figures around Facebook, like for example that there are about 103 million active Facebook users for every one of the just over 300 employees. Facebook seems to be running a bit like Ultimate Frisbee, a competitive sport in which referees are all but obsolete. This mentality of preserving the ’spirit of the game’ is why I bet Facebook will sustain resonance with consumers, are in it for the long haul and will go down in history as a marketing success story.

So how is any of this good for us mere bloggers?

Well me thinks a lot of the self satisfied mindless drivel that has been increasingly clogging the arteries of the blogosphere, the gunk congesting the synapses of the noosphere has found a brand new home. One infinitely more efficient at catering to the insipid mundanities of herd instinct, the gratuitous exchange of cutesy clipart and the very life blood of web2.0 as we know it – VANITY! :- )

Don’t get me wrong – I love Facebook ( – maybe this is why ;- )

Facebook and its kin might just have a very positive impact on the quality of ‘real’ blogs. So we’ll see less of what who-ever did who-else in a bout of drunken stupor over the weekend and more skillfully crafted original and meaningful content.

Maybe this will improve the chances for ordinary people to do something that stands out, to enter the commercial media arena on their own terms armed with creativity, conviction, maybe a blogspot account or hand-full of WordPress plugins – and of course a BlogKits Review campaign or two : )

André SC

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