I really want that to be true, I want the Internet to be a level playing field where Facebook is just another company; where "Facebook URLs" are a short-lived fad that people will crack jokes about in a few years time. And chances are that you're right! I've got my fingers crossed.
That said, you've got to admit that this is a different phenomena than AOL keywords.
I've seen plenty of brick-and-mortar businesses lately that have a sign up proudly declaring "become our fan at facebook.com/abc", and I'm not even located in the US! I've encountered these signs in Australia and New Zealand, for what it's worth.
In contrast, I don't recall ever seeing a sign up saying "Remember, our AOL keyword is 'abc'" or anything along those lines. The phenomenon is reminiscent but not comparable at all, in my opinion, if only because AOL was lacking the social aspect completely.
In the UK at least it feels very much AOL --> Facebook, and for what it's worth I've always assumed that in that aspect we are just mimicking America (without having bothered to confirm that assumption).
From (roughly, from memory) 2000 to only a couple of years ago I was regularly seeing "AOL Keyword: <blah>" in video more traditional (print/real-life) advertising. The biggest example that comes to mind is movie trailors, they ALWAYS promoted with AOL, but plenty of other brands were, too.
Possibly the reason I always assumed that it carried over from America was the fact that, at least in my corner of England, AOL were reasonably irrelevant. I mean, they weren't unknown, or even unused, but they didn't exactly seem like a big player. (Again, this was during the latter part of my childhood, so this is from memory of my experience, not from analysing businesses at the time.)
So The Fates have decided the outcome. The only thing left to do is see how long Facebook's demise will take.
It will be very interesting to see the outcome. I don't think Facebook will fade away, AOL style, however some form comparison will be useful to try and divine whether the factors that govern such sites have changed in the past few years - particularly since Facebook's users are more global than perhaps AOL's were.
Yes, but it was fairly short lived. What will be interesting to see is if the internet ebbs and tides between the open (early internet like usenet and bbs, and more or less current form of the internet), and closed (AOL, and possibly now facebook) or if this is a more permanent switch back to a comfort zone for people online.
However, AOL at its peak had 30 million subscribers. How many does Facebook have?
Since 2001 internet use has made the share of AOL much smaller and still everyone needed to connect. There are many users since who have never seen AOL services in use, including myself.
However, internet adoption in democratic non-banning societies is going to slow down (saturation) and Facebook is going to be even more integrated. And since we mostly communicate with people from the same country and even from the same city, growth in non-Facebook countries is not going to matter.
What I would like to happen is that Facebook becomes obsolete or too annoying (like MySpace).
I don't know how many customers Facebook has. Do you?
It's certainly less than the 30 million customers AOL had. (Customer defined as someone who pays for service).
Facebook has it's place for the people who like safe, controlled and easy. Like 30m AOL customers. MySpace was never safe, barely controlled and not really easy.
AOL lost out because its model was broken - most people found the winder web more interesting than it's curated pages. Facebook doesn't curate it's own pages. It's a microcosm of the web. It is not going to fail in the same way as AOL or MySpace.
I for one am happy for all this stuff to stay on Facebook, and for the wider web to contain the heavy-weight version.
