Optimists:

• Global Social Networks are growing.
• Younger Consumers are more receptive to advertising on user-generated content sites.
• Widgets make Facebook a great platform.
• Recipe for Succesful Facebook Apps

Pessimists:

• Social Networks won’t work for business.
• Social Ads won’t work.
• In order to make money, Facebook-Apps would need more users than currently exist on Facebook.
• Facebook-Apps are for children.

Neutral:

• The biggest and most open network wins.
• Pros and Cons of Opening a Social Network
• Facebook needs to buy content from other user-generated platforms.
• Long-Tail distribution of Facebook-Apps

This is is just a short list of articles that I find very illuminating on the whole Facebook-Controversy. More articles are going to be added to this list.

Steve Rubel points to this graph and seems to say: does this feel like a bubble, all this talk about Web 2.0? Maybe it just reflects the fact that HR departments realize that this is important?

Despites Microsoft involvement with Facebook, what would happen if Google and Facebook merge? Like in the screenshot of Google in 2084, can you then literally search your brain, your friends’ private life or conversations of your former colleagues?

It is possible to link Google and Facebook. With this Facebook-Application it is possible to search Google directly. Another (malfunct) Widget displays your Facebook profile on IGoogle. Yet another (malfunct) application links Orkut and Facebook.

The Judge Business School seems to be a large playground. Today’s “toddlers” came from Silicon Valley, ready to meet start-ups, entrepreneurs, students and an interested crowd.

Amicably, as Americans are, the conference was very entertaining and a good opportunity to learn about what is “Hot” at the Silicon Valley: Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, User-Generated-Media, Facebook, Data Privacy, Consumer-Media-Applications, Facebook. Oh, and did I mention that we talked about Facebook a lot?

The experts were good. Kara Swisher’s dry humour about how much she is annoyed by Facebook or Reid Hoffman (from LinkedIn) witty about the seven deadly sins working in Social Networks stick to my memory.

Facebook deserves the buzz. But discussions only scratched the surface. It seems to me that real hardcore-information is sometimes hard to get and the experts are reluctant to give it away. How to avoid the problems which scaling a social network involves? How to best organize the user-support? Which features are sticky? What are the essential characteristics of succesful Social Networks? Innovative new ideas? A viral user-base? An appealing design? Or is the random factor very important? How important is data-security? Hans-Peter Brondmo made an interesting remark that we need to look at user-data as an asset that is individually owned, which should be protected from theft but which also could be sold if the user consents to it. Would the users care more about their data if they really own it?

The answer to these questions are more likely to help decide whether there is a Web 2.0 bubble. The question is not whether technology stock prices are too high or companies are bought for incredible sums. The question is not whether there are too many start-ups or too much Venture Capitalists running with the herd.

The last bubble burst because everybody had wrong expectations about the behaviour of people on the Internet. The expectation was that by 2005 everything would be done on the Internet. The question is really: has the behaviour changed enough to change the way money is earned on the Internet?

In reference to my previous discussion of Facebook Advertisment, I think that Facebook-Pages might be a good possiblity to spread information for local public institutions, such as libraries.

Facebook would certainly be a great tool to search for books in my library, renew my loans, share recommendations about books and discuss the class material with my classmates. Some libraries have created a profile on Facebook. Sarah Glassmeyer writes:

A couple of British libraries decided to start into the Facebook Pages. As of 9:30am EST (on November 14th), there are 70 Library Facebook Pages. There are 36 university libraries, 30 public libraries, 2 private libraries, 1 corporate and 1 virtual.

Several discussion groups have emerged around this topic: FacebookAppsforLibraries and LibAds(sm) discuss SocialAd technology to retrieve local library information.

The Library 2.0 Interest Group discusses how Social Networks can help libraries to bridge the Social Space and the Academic Space (see diagram on the left). Gerry McKiernan’s blog reports about the use of online social networking sites for library-related programs or services and is a great resource for developments in this field.