In an unusual event of my actually finding Facebook useful in potentia—I added a friend to find out their email address—I discovered Facebook’s public search listing feature. From this stems my publicly available Facebook page which is indexed by search engines.

This page lists my status updates, my friends and allows people to send me a message. I wonder how many Facebook users realise this page exists. For me it isn’t a particular bother, I’m used to information about me being publicly available and rather think it’s a good thing. For others, however, this isn’t the case.

Several of my friends don’t understand why I have a personal weblog. The internet isn’t the same to them as it is to me. I see a wonderful tool to connect with the wider world and don’t understand why I’d limit its use to my existing friendship group. To many, computers engender a feeling they lack control, from this can stem fear as we don’t feel we are on safe ground. From this other viewpoint, I can empathise the closed nature of Facebook is appealing. Facebook is controllable, you can feel safe there. Is this one reason people flock there?

There are dangers on the internet, but there are many in everyday life and we don’t hide ourselves away there. We understand everyday life, however, and so feel on more concrete foundations. Starting from a base of confidence we don’t need the safety of a closed environment. I wonder whether the internet will ever feel so safe, as technology progresses from imperfect stage to imperfect stage without stopping to fill in the cracks which make it feel so complex.

Every so often I have to sit back and reflect on how amazing the world is because of all the technological advances computing has brought, to recharge my batteries and convince myself what I do is worthwhile.

I can sit on my sofa with a video on my desktop which has travelled thousands of miles, including through space, talking to one of my best friends whilst they sit at a desk in Tokyo. I can walk down the street talking to my parents who are a hundred miles away like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Indeed, I can be directed through a city I’ve never visited before as if I’m a native who’s lived there all my life and knows all the shortcuts, all through a small hand-held box.

There’s a fantastic video I return to which explains this more lucidly, Everything’s amazing, nobody’s happy.

What bothers me most about Facebook Connect, which has gone live today after being announced earlier in the year, is its unfairness toward those sites which adopt it. Facebook gets the lion’s share of the benefits of the program, much like I’ve mentioned before. I worry Facebook is attempting to use its large user base to bend others to its own ends, which is not good for the future of the Internet.

A client website of Facebook Connect benefits from two main things: an easier signup process for Facebook users and, like a Facebook Application, access to basic information about the users social group. The value of these varies based on the client site, but, however useful they are, Facebook’s benefits are huge in comparison.

One worrying possibility is that, by harvesting data from the client site to power its own functions, Facebook may force users of a third party site to sign up for Facebook if they wish to share their activities on the client site with their friends. In addition to this, Facebook seems to gain a control point over the client site—does a site loose a significant number of users if Facebook decides to pull the plug? How plausible is it that Facebook could hold a site to (some kind of) ransom? Add to this the increasing view into your life Facebook gets—and stores on its servers.

MySpace, in contrast, has been embracing open standards such as OpenID and OAuth to power its efforts. Myspace’s use of open standards makes me more confident I would be able to select services to use based on their quality rather than that I am already locked into them. The corporate IT world is becoming more fearful of lock-in, but consumers have yet to experience the pain of being locked-in to a single vendor. I hope the lessons learnt by businesses will not have to be relearnt by consumers, but all the signs indicate they may need to be.

The biggest benefit of MySpace’s use of open standards is that one is not beholden to Facebook’s— or another company’s —beck and call, which I believe is an unsound foundation to build upon. Open and widely used standards also attract a greater community around them, which should lead to greater longevity of the standards. I just don’t buy a closed standard like Facebook Connect can lead to an all-boats-rise result.

Previous efforts of this nature, such as Microsoft Passport, haven’t taken root despite huge user bases. Facebook’s Connect offers benefits over the single sign in offered before, but time will tell whether it becomes integrated into the fabric of the Internet in the way it obviously hopes to be.

I have come to believe one of the obstacles to my regularly writing something for the site is the presence of titles. A title begs for something of substance to be written underneath it.

Offhand, pithy notes about some small, but interesting, event seem of not enough substance; a single paragraph below a title is lacking the impact the title demands. But I often want to write these small notes. For example, to briefly note the Amazon MP3 store has opened in the UK. I feel it deserves more than just a tweet, but don’t have some deep insight to merit a whole title.

So, the question of title now bears down upon me for this very post. The post complaining about my cornering myself with titles is itself cornered by the very object of its ire. I shall overcome this time, this post is small but I must believe it worthy.

The latest posts from Merlin Man of 43Folders have resonated with me. Creativity is not something that comes magically, but must be worked on day after day, week after week. The lack of posts recently on the site point toward a waning in my effort. I’m not sure how to rectify this. Part of this is the need to do rather than merely comment. For now, however, comment.

At work, amongst my day-to-day duties, I paint a picture of the cloud as the future, which is rewarding. Now the phenomenon has a name, most have heard of it, which was not the case a year ago. Like Web 2.0, “cloud” is a vague term, but a name provides a way to set a frame of reference. It does sometimes feel, however, like one’s voice gets lost in the cacophony present inside any large company.

Here, on dx13, I often think of writing and championing the cloud as the future, but the net is already full to bursting of people doing that; I don’t feel like being another part of that echo-chamber. As important, the regular readers of the site are either well aware of the changes both happening and to come, or they don’t find them particularly interesting. As I wrote posts, I feel the enthusiasm draining as it becomes clear I’m repeating the voice of many others. So it doesn’t feel like I’d add anything there; I delete drafts ruthlessly.

A root cause is a wondering where I fit in to this, where is the niche to which I can profitably direct my efforts? I can see one obvious possibility, though quite how I pursue it I’m unsure right now.

I avidly advocate and follow standards like OpenID and OAuth, as I fundamentally believe open standards allow the brightest ideas to shine the brightest. Small services, loosely joined is a mantra I repeat both early and often. If the future is to hold the possibility for anyone with an fantastic idea to build a fantastic service, the ability to stand on the shoulders of giants is a must. And as the shoulders of giants are stood on, the giants stand to benefit as much and the ones they support. Value trickles down the system.

This is one reason I love Twitter and only grudgingly use Facebook. Twitter embraces the network and its standards whilst Facebook sticks its head in the sand and refuses, as much as it can, to play ball with anyone else. To this end, Facebook stands alone, whilst Twitter have built up a network of companies and services which are partly dependent on Twitter. Twitter allows you to re-use its data, and in doing so you build both the value of your own service and that of Twitter.

Facebook applications, on the other hand, are very restricted in what they can do with Facebook’s data and are required to cut a deal with Facebook before being allowed to use what data they can. Facebook has a clear unilateral strategy, as it brazenly ignores community standards in creating its closed empire.

In the end, however, the open Internet has always triumphed over this mindset, as with Compuserve and AOL in the early years of its popularisation. As the open innovation crowd say, the vast majority of the best ideas are outside your business. Embrace them, don’t fight them. Facebook, though a poster child of Web 2.0, seems an old-school secrecy-based company at heart. Perhaps their VCs make it that way, or perhaps Mark Zuckerberg really does believe he knows best (and, being honest, he’s got many things right so far).

I need to do some more thinking.