Is Facebook The Future Of The Internet?

Facebook is shaping up to become the main portal for many when entering the internet, but is this really something we want?
Facebook’s ambition seems to be to take over the internet. Is it The Matrix? Recent speculations on the future of the social network have taken a dramatic turn as it purchases rivals and possible competitors. What’s going on?
Doomsday speculations are rarely as serious as they’re made out to be, however there have actually been some pretty startling pieces of news about Facebook’s business recently. The most serious accusation is that the social network is tracking the browsing behaviour of people who’ve explicitly asked not to be monitored, something which is actually illegal under EU law. An extensive research report commissioned by the Belgian data protection agency found that Facebook has been keeping track of visits from people who are not logged in – not just to the Facebook site, but to any website which has an embedded Facebook ‘like’ button. Overlooking the fact that this tracking is illegal in the EU, what this report seems to reveal is that Facebook is very interested in the behaviour of its ghost users, or users who are not members.
“If people who are not being tracked by Facebook use the ‘opt out’ mechanism proposed for the EU, Facebook places a long-term, uniquely identifying cookie, which can be used to track them for the next two years,” Günes Acar from Cosic, co-writer of the report, said to ‘The Guardian’.
It also shows that Facebook doesn’t just want to know about what happens within its site anymore, but also what happens in the rest of the virtual world. This interest was demonstrated last year with the acquisition of virtual reality headset manufacturer, Oculus Rift, which made it clear: Facebook wants to bring real-life experiences into the Facebook world.
Michael Abrash, chief scientist of Oculus VR, made several references to The Matrix when he spoke at March’s V8 developer conference. In The Matrix, Neo had a choice between taking the red pill and enter the “rabbit hole” or taking the blue pill and going home, but – fiction though the film may be – that’s apparently not where things are going. “Unlike Morpheus, I’m not offering you a choice [of pills] today. No matter what you pick, we’re heading down the rabbit hole together,” Abrash joked.
Although he was joking when he compared Oculus’ virtual reality to The Matrix, the joke may be only temporary, as the company is a long way off creating any sort of experience similar to that in the film. Abrash detailed how today’s Oculus Rift users have to choose between a virtual reality that takes up their entire field of vision, or taking off the headset. However, the platform is evolving: “You’ll be able to pull the real world into virtual reality so you can pick up your coffee cup [at your desk]. You’ll be able to map your surroundings so you can stand up and walk around.”.
Headlines proclaiming that Facebook is the new AOL don’t have the same dramatic flair as those claiming Facebook is becoming The Matrix, but the AOL comparison references is actually something in the same vein: a world where a single portal is most people’s main gateway to the internet. AOL was that portal once for most Americans over 35, and as Facebook consolidates services onto its platform it’s not inconceivable that we may be heading in a similar direction.
Companies have already started posting videos directly to Facebook instead of linking them from other sites, and Facebook has also been in discussions with news outlets about hosting their content directly:
“Facebook has been quietly holding talks with at least half a dozen media owners about hosting their content inside Facebook rather than making users tap a link to go to an external site,” reported the ‘New York Times’. “Such a plan would represent a leap of faith for news organisations [that are] accustomed to keeping their readers within their own ecosystems, as well as accumulating valuable data on them.”. What this means for the media owners is a complicated divide of advertising revenue and data sharing, who owns the Facebook data and who owns the media owners’ data?
The relationship between Facebook and news outlets is already complicated, as the social network controls over a third  of the traffic sent to publishers in some cases. “Facebook has fallen into the role of audience gatekeeper for many publishers, and it’s offering (!) to optimise that relationship,” writes Joshua Benton at ‘Nieman Journalism Lab’. “Facebook controls a large share of [publishers’] audience and has user data [they] have no hope of matching. Is it worth the tradeoff to get extra Facebook dollars today in exchange for a little of your independence tomorrow?”.
What do you think? Do you think your business would benefit from becoming a part of the all-powerful Facebook? Tweet us @vpsnet.