[rehack]

Agree transactions will make money for somebody.

Let me take just take one example of 'movies' from your sentence. Would you think of Youtube or Facebook as a natural choice for watching paid videos/movies?

Likewise, IMO, there will be specific things for specific purposes.

I will proffer that the specific purpose for FB usage are things like vanity and managing one's image (how one wants to be seen in their social circle).

Recently I am seeing some 'xyz watched some <abc video> on Social cam' kind of statuses on FB, of some xyzs who I am sure have not noticed such broadcast to their friends. These kind of mistakes, might just result in some very embarrassed and angry people.

(Am I the only one scared of clicking on anything, on any web page on the Internet, that is wrapped in 'Facebook blue' ?)

I believe the privacy concerns of these kind are going to spread to a wider base of people.

Edit: rephrase

[kamaal]

>>Recently I am seeing some 'xyz watched some <abc video> on Social cam' kind of statuses on FB, of some xyzs who I am sure have not noticed such broadcast to their friends. These kind of mistakes, might just result in some very embarrassed and angry people.

This is true. Since I observed this. I take care to log out of Gmail/Facebook/Twitter once I am done with them. And I never browse anything when I'm logged into into one of those sites.

>>Am I the only one scared of clicking on anything, on any web page on the Internet, that is wrapped in 'Facebook blue' ?

A lot of people are scared. I had to call friend to tell him personally that the <abc video> he watched that is showing up as the status might be embarrassing and he had to login and delete that from this status.

[rehack]

I don't logout, but try to open any links from within FB in 'incognito' mode.

[cgmorton]

There's a lovely browser addon called 'Facebook Disconnect' than blocks all third-party calls to the Facebook API. Available in Chrome and Firefox, and probably others.

[hackinthebochs]

>Likewise, IMO, there will be specific things for specific purposes.

It would do techies a lot of good to realize this is not true for most people. People do not have "specific sites for specific purposes". To most people the web browser is the internet. The distinction between different pages is fuzzy at best. And at this point facebook itself is the internet to a lot people. If facebook offered a compelling X experience (X can be anything here), people absolutely will use it. Do not fool yourself into thinking most internet users compartmentalize their internet usage. They absolutely do not. That is the power of facebook.

[rehack]

Replying to both your comments here.

Agree on your point that barrier to entry is higher for G+ than FB Search (if it launches).

Regarding Search: I would ask, how many people overall use Google search and how many use Facebook in the world. I would guess that the number is sort of equivalent, with google search users being slightly more than FB users.

And if that's the case, then what is to make people not use google search and shift to FB search (which is yet to be, BTW!), unless the quality is vastly superior. Which in my opinion is not an easy thing to achieve.

Also regarding any generic feature X, I doubt if people who are very new to Internet can start flashing their credit cards, if FB asks them to. Yes, they could be perhaps made to click on any thing, which again means just Ads. But, even in this, I think, we could be underestimating the intelligence of an avg. Internet user.

Also Google Adwords has a strong knowledge of user intent. And hence the Ads are useful for sellers. Over here, they are like TV Ads, but with a difference. And that difference is they can be ignored.

edit: minor rephrase

[hackinthebochs]

The reason that people would potentially shift to a facebook search would be for simplicity. Instead of having to go to google.com they can just search in a box that's on the page they're already on. Of course, this isn't so easy anymore as there are many ways to search google now. So I don't think just having an internet search box on the page is enough. But I don't think it has to be much more. Just the fact that you could search while remaining on facebook might be compelling enough for a non-trivial amount of users. Also a "socially informed" search could be a key feature, even if its trivially implemented. Just having a "trusted" friend's icon next to certain results could seem useful to a naive user.

The point is, I don't think facebook has to do anything fundamentally better than google to win many converts. The results just can't be obviously worse. And for what most people search for, I don't think this is hard. Celebrities, sports, products, etc; I'd say that's low hanging fruit considering the amount of brainpower facebook has on its payroll. The long tail search that google is famous for isn't likely to matter to the facebook user targetted here.

An obvious case study to a company leveraging their userbase to grow out of their original business model is Amazon with its kindle. It was a great product certainly, but the benefit having it advertised on the top of their landing page can't be overstated. So many people are intent on putting facebook in a social box and saying "well they can't monetize social so they're doomed" is short-sighted. Social is just the hook, there are literally endless ways they can monetize all those eyes.

[rehack]

Okay, looks like we will continue to have difference of opinion on this one. But nice getting to know your thoughts. Hopefully continue later some time ...