“The Same Thing We Do Every Night Pinky…”

The race to take over the world has been getting interesting, and Facebook just pulled ahead. If you think Facebook isn't in the process of building a search engine, I think you're crazy. Last week Facebook launched its own messaging application, Facebook's own twist on email. Today, Facebook landed a major coup against Google in their competing bids to take over the world. Apparently Facebook has overtaken Google in web traffic, getting 3% more visits and unseating Google as the most visited site on the internet over the period of a week. Not only that, but Facebook accounts for 25% of all web traffic in the U.S. Wait, what?   

You mean 25% of all the traffic on the internet is due to Facebook? That's astounding. If Zuckerberg could somehow weave porn into his business plan, Facebook could probably get that number up into the 80/90 percentile, though he probably doesn't need to. The truth is Facebook probably has a greater chance than all of its technological counterparts of "taking over the world" because Zuckerberg has what no one else does: people (just last week Myspace gave up by allowing you connect to it via Facebook.  "My Myspace page has a Facebook page."). This is the brilliance of the social networking site's push into everyone else's territory, and more to the point it's the entire brilliance behind Facebook.  

Google, through its search engine, Gmail, Chrome, and other various projects, is merely a collection of data, a giant warehouse for information and various tools for navigating the internet. The central foundation behind Facebook is actual people and their relationships to other people. This is why I'm prepared to predict that Facebook will ultimately unleash a unique search engine that will combine traditional web searching with the vast array of information Facebook has about people. Really the scope of Facebook is limitless because Zuckerberg has done what no one else had been able to. He's created a virtual world, a Second Life, for us regular people who find it difficult to geek out in a fiction world of digitized fantasy. He's merging people's personal lives to the internet. This might be why Google is running away from Facebook—or driving at least. Maybe they've chosen to cede the internet to Facebook, and instead are building cars that drive themselves. Seriously though, could someone explain to me why the guys who brought you a search engine and Gmail are making a car that drives itself. I'm all for it, I just never thought it would come from Google—though Google mapping the planet probably makes it easiest for them. My opinions of Zuckerberg and Facebook remain in the "skeptically wary of what's going on" category, but also in the "amazed at the brilliance of what's being built" category. I think from now on I will end post about Facebook with what is listed under "Personal Interest" on Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook page. Depending on your view of Facebook you can interpret it in either a sinister or positive manner. Are revolutions a good thing or a bad thing?

    "openness, making things that help people connect and share what's important to them, revolutions, information flow, minimalism"

Oh, and I almost forgot:

The last and golden era of after school and Saturday morning cartoons... the 90's, Never Forget.