Mike Elgan is wrong and I'm tired of the anti-Facebook sentiment on Google+
Mike Elgan yesterday wrote that Facebook is the new Yahoo:
https://plus.google.com/113117251731252 ... s1MjY4PPZPThat is absolutely wrong.
Here's why: Yahoo has never tried to be visionary since, well, they bought Flickr about eight years ago.
Since then no one at Yahoo can explain what they are or where they are going or how they are going to get there.
Everyone at Facebook can tell me a story about how they are building a new Internet identity system (see my "Game of Games" piece for more
http://scobleizer.com/2011/09/11/the-ga ... ial-world/ ).
Some additional thoughts:
1. Microsoft built its business by being a fast follower. Windows was a poor copy of the Macintosh. Didn't matter. They kept at it until it got good enough with Windows 95. Then the whole world flipped. Then they kept copying. In 1996 some kids developed ICQ. First Microsoft tried to buy that, then, 24 months later they just copied it. Ended up with hundreds of millions of people on the copy.
2. Facebook has something Google+ doesn't have: noise controls. I could spend all day long explaining the new noise controls that they shipped this week, due to super lists. These are features Google+ DOES NOT HAVE YET and, so, if you think Facebook is just copying Google+ you are absolutely 100% wrong.
3. The #1 feature is "where are your friends." So far Google is way behind there. Facebook didn't copy Google+ there. Google, in fact, has copied Facebook in many many areas (including the lame 5,000 friend limit. Couldn't they have made it 4950? Or 6,000?)
4. The arrogance here is leading the community astray. You think that saying "Google is being copied by Facebook" is going to help Google+ to grow? Really? To me it looks like a bunch of losers who don't have any real-life friends and are the types I really don't want to spend every Saturday night talking about important (or not so important) topics with.
We are in the middle of a war between Google and Facebook. They WILL COPY EACH OTHER! Get over it. That's business. Apple copied Microsoft and Microsoft copied Apple and Apple copied Xerox (I'm speaking at the building where Steve Jobs copied a lot of things out of this morning, just to put a punctuation mark on it).
Silicon Valley was built on copying. Get over it. Let's celebrate the fact that 750 million people today have features they didn't have two months ago.
I want Google to copy Facebook's other features, including noise control. Facebook is easily 18 months ahead. Google, start up your copying machines to catch the heck up!
And, +Mike Elgan you are totally underestimating Facebook if you think they are the new Yahoo. That really was a ridiculous thing to write. Not even close. Yahoo doesn't even know why they should be copying Larry Page or Mark Zuckerberg or where to start.
Robert Scoble is totally right here. There's quite a lot of pretentious Google+ users, and it can get irritating.