Facebook, as the single most popular app on the net today, is also training the future users of computing,” Benioff writes. “In many ways it is becoming the new connector of everything on the Internet with universal like. And as it nears half a billion users and is growing faster than ever before, it’s only a matter of time before a billion people use this new way to communicate. Everything about Facebook, the app, the entire ecosystem around it, and all of the user’s data and metadata is in the cloud. It’s a 100% pure Internet app. Most importantly, none of it is written with any Microsoft software.”
“Facebook’s success, as well as the rise of other new technologies like YouTube, devices like the iPhone and the iPad and models like Cloud Computing are evidence of a huge shift happening in computing — and it’s bigger than anything we have seen before,” Benioff writes. “IAnd although Microsoft is a casualty, it certainly is not the cause. This is the fundamental nature of our industry in which every 10 years or so a radical new paradigm of computing emerges.”
Benioff writes, “As we try to keep pace with these changes to a new computing industry, we are left with only two choices: innovate or die. Microsoft like DEC before it, and IBM (IBM) before it, tried too long to hold on to its Windows model believing it was permanent in an industry of impermanence. But it didn’t work out that way. Google outsmarted Microsoft into the Internet, and it dominated the next Internet paradigm. Now Apple is the clear winner in the new mobile paradigm.”
Full article – highly recommended – here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “James W.” for the heads up.]
so sick of facebook, to be honest.
@TM:
I hear you. FB is getting boring.
Time says Steve is Top Thinker No. 11. Anybody remember when the 11th top thinker changed the world?
Will MDN report this?
Is Time Magazine now “Beleaguered Time Magazine”?
@ theloniousMac and silverwarloc
I hear ya.
Facebook would do well to follow an Apple-like approach and have tighter control over “apps” that run within it.
Also, how about refining things a bit. For starters
• Only change the profile pic for future posts, leaving previous posts with the profile pic used during that wall post or comment (you know so they are actually relevent). Or provide a preference for users to decide.
• Find a way to better integrate the different networks people usually keep for Friends, Family and Business. The existing prefs don’t do the job well-enogh. Maybe even a tabbed or 3-column view option would work well.
• Let me not only hide Farmville and Mafia Wars posts from my wall, but from any friend’s wall I visit
Other suggestions?
I think MS will be fine. They will revert back to catering to the business crowd that buys volume beige boxes for boring business stuff.
Also got bored with Facebook; Twitter has become my latest interest, as I’ve been able to make new friends crossing my wide range of interests. (And it’s grown far beyond folks posting what they’re eating!)
@Quad core
Sure, and IBM will be fine too.
Facebook is tedious
Sounds like Zuckerberg, et al., should sell FB while it is worth it. Hopefully to M$ so they can screw it up.
Facebook really does suck.
Did anyone read the comments about this article on its comment page. Boy, the MS paid trolls were out in force. From the comments you could just see the “need” for people to keep MS products …… not because they are good, but because Microsoft says that you should use them.
Weird people.
Just a thought.
en
More cloud drivel from someone who thinks Facebook is the equivalent of an enterprise application, and another CEO of a niche product whistling through the minefield of the marketplace.
I never had a Facebook until this year, and only then because my wif created it for me.
I go on there every now and then to post somethng funny, or a pic I took of something cool, like exotic cars and so forth.
The crap like Farmville though gets in the way of anything I would actually be interested in.
It also annoys me when people I either don’t know, or don’t remember, want to be my “friend.”
Seriously? Do you have such a low self-esteem that you need my approval to feel good about yourself. Well, guess what, you don’t have it.
Facebook is a joke.
While the entire article is good, reading the comments from the dinosaurs is even better. All the MS fanboys just can’t handle the thought that MS is 20 years behind the times.
Well boys, the fiery meteor is hurling through space heading toward Redmond and it has an Apple logo on it.
Apple / SIRI will kill facebook.
One day Farmville Games will be available to play in cars, boats, trains, planes, books, magazines, shoes, bathrooms stalls, tv, cable…..
Dance Monkey Boy
Dance for us all again…
Facebook is a success because it allows people to interact with their friends not in NEW ways, but in ways that don’t involve SPAM, and advertising has been keep to a bare minimum.
Compare that with web pages filled with ads.. pop up, pop over, pop down, flashing, and the like…. compare it with email.. 90% of which is spam… and it’s easy to see that people CHOOSE to avoid all the static to enjoy relating to others on the internet.
Facebook would do well to just have a real simple interface. What a mess.
@Time’s Steve
Nope. Only the #1 ever does anything.
@ dd
How exactly????
I now know of many people that have dropped out of Facebook because the gossip and drama that invades their pages. They got sick of it and said it was turning into a waste of time.