Robert Scoble Checks Into Facebook Hotel: TechMeme, Mahalo Get Rooms Too
The Scobleizer Facebook juggernaut is full steam ahead. With his “friend” count now at 4775, it is perfect Scoble timing to double down on his Facebook rules the world scenario: After all, if Facebook wins, wouldn’t the top Facebookers as well?
Are the friendliest Facebookers really that friendly, though? Scoble acknowledges his Facebook “friends” aren’t really, in explaining why he doesn’t personally email all his friends:
I find I have too many friends, even if you count just the “real ones” tht I’ve had a beer with as a friend.
For Robert Scoble, Facebook Web domination is a given–who needs Google, even! Facebook deserves even more, though: Next Facebook step, the real world. After lunching with a Facebook exec, Scoble was inspired to dream big, for Facebook.
Welcome to Scoble’s Facebook Hotel, really:
Think about how a business would change if it knew every one of its customers had a Facebook account.
I was thinking of a hotel/casino where when I walked in the iPod in the room was playing the music that I had set as my favorite on my Facebook profile. The digital screens in my room had all my photos and some random photos from my friends. My favorite movies and TV shows were on the video device. The bar knew my favorite drink and how I liked it made. That got me thinking about how I’d change my business after I knew everything about my customers.
Oh, one thing? In my Facebook Hotel anyone who just attacks me would be deleted.
TechMeme, Mahalo are NOT deleted from the Scoble future view of the world. Google now deemed to soon be be old news, though.
SURPRISNG, given Scoble’s previous Google props.
June 6: “TechMeme, not quite Google News”:
TechMeme really wants to be Google News, it seems. I see less and less blogs on TechMeme lately and more and more “professional news.” The problem with that shift is that Google News already does “professional news” a lot better than TechMeme.
May 17: “Google to Yahoo and Microsoft: the $1.65 billion was worth it”
Google just distanced themselves from Yahoo and Microsoft. By putting YouTube’s results into Google’s main engine, Googel ensures it will have better searches than Yahoo and Microsoft. I love Google’s strategy. Google just put Microsoft’s Internet strategy in a box. If Google were justg playing chess I think they just said check. And you wonder why the rest of the industry is talking about FOG (Fear of Google)? Exactly.
Scoble WAS wary of Google knowing too much though.
April 24: “Google tracking my history”:
I turned on Google History. I’ve gotta admit, that really freaks me out to see all my surfing behavior tracked and displayed in my face.
ODD that Scoble is OK with the Facebook getting in his FACE!
Scobleizers’ commenters are not all pleased:
HavingFun: Facebook is just a bunch of personal ads. Sure, you get others blog posts, but that’s because they don’t have a blog.
Truden: Pushing your web site content through Facebook and all social networks is the most used technique by the weblog money makers. Yes, you don’t see your content in Facebook and here is the catch - the other users see it (all your 4,775 friends). Isn’t that “pushing content”? I doubt that you read all of your friends. You’ll notice only the most active from them. And because you are the most active of all, all of them will notice you and read you. Make sense, eh?
Facebook is not a bad place especially for lonely people, but when one like Scoble is stuffing it up so hard in my nose, I start to feel like Scoble is attacking me for some reason.
Jonathan Trenn: Facebook Hotel sounds positively Orwellian. Big screens that tell your data. RFID cards that automatically tell others your interests. I’ll save a few bucks and stay in a Motel 8.
Josh: a place that I’d never ever ever want to book a reservation at (course, carried to an extreme I probably wouldn’t even have to book the reservation, it’d just know
). The levels of customization companies can take advantage of to offer good customer service, could be amazingly useful, but it also freaks me out. I think it prevents us from exposure to the dangerous, possibly thought and preference-changing, elements of the unknown.
I mean, I both need and want to hear new music in order to be able to ever list it as a “like.” Sometimes I hear that new music from friends, sometimes playing in a store, or even a hotel lobby. I don’t want my hotel room to automatically be showing me my photos on digital displays. If it did, they risk becoming mundane and boring, rather than important and dear. Let me live out my trip to wherever, experiencing the new as opposed to the known.
The great sadness in molding experience to predefined customer preferences is that we seal ourselves into some time passed, that was captured in memory and tastes, and we discourage growing beyond that.
In other words, beware the treacherous weeds within the Facebook walled garden.
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