Two of the biggest powers on the Internet are Google and Facebook. Both have enormous audiences, but the basic principles of the two are different.
Google provides its users with links of information, and then the users leave Google to seek out their information on the other side of the “Google wall.” Facebook is different in that it wants its users to remain on its website for their information. Facebook is a community, and ideally, its users can provide and recommend all the information the site needs.
Google has thus far made a heck-of-a-lot more money than Facebook, but Facebook has always had the potential to challenge Google because of the size of its audience.
Well, Facebook has recently taken a small step outside of its own social community; however, the recent move still drives people to Facebook. Now, Facebook “like” buttons will appear on other various websites. If you “like” an article, photo, blog post or website you can click the “like” button and your suggestion will appear on your Facebook wall.
In addition, if my friends have “liked” an article on CNN.com, their Facebook profile picture will appear on that same article on CNN.com showing that one of my friends “liked” it as well.
So how will these changes affect us?
First off, you better check your privacy settings because if you don’t change your “liked” settings then the entire Internet will know what you like and don’t like. Maybe you don’t mind, but I don’t want ‘normies’ on the Internet being able to put my face to my preferences.
These changes could also eventually change the way we search the web. Are we browsing the web we want or are we browsing the web are friends recommend to us? This might limit the vastness and randomness of your searches on the Internet if we only view the “likes” of our friends.
Would you like this type of browsing? I’m not sure if I do or not.
