A Blog Around The Clock

Let's start with some Essential Facebook Readings of the day:

The Facebook Juggernaut...bitch!
Where are Facebook's Early Adopters Going?
Hmmm, Facebook: a new kind of press release
All your widgets are belong to Facebook
Why We're Like a Million Monkeys on Treadmills
Facebook: the new data black hole
What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?
Why I Dropped Scoble and Seceded from the Hunt for Newer Shinier Things

My predictions for the near future, and I'll explain them below:

1) In a Clash Of Titans, Google turns iGoogle into something better than Facebook. Facebook is crushed into oblivion.

2) In a Clash Of Titans, Facebook adds everything that is currently still missing in a frenzied flurry of activity and becomes the 'It' thing. Google is crushed into oblivion.

3) Google buys Facebook for a gazillion dollars and incorporates it into its arsenal.

4) Facebook resists sale now and, two years later, buy Google for a gazillion dollars and incorporates it into its arsenal.

5) I am totally wrong.

Why am I making such outrageous statements?

Because, most of the people pontificating on Facebook are techies. They love to try new things - the New Shiny Objects. They are, thus, a tiny minority. 99.9% of the people do not operate that way. They want to have One Thing.

This is a time of frantic experimentation, with apparently a new communication gizmo or 'killer app' appearing every day. It's confusing. It's too much. In a Darwinian struggle, all of those will die and one most liked by the general public will win. It may not be the best one (remember - VHS beat out Betamax), but it will be the one that most people are most comfortable with. Both Google and Facebook are now getting too close to that ideal to allow any newcomer to threaten them. They are the VHS and Betamax of the Web. Either they will fuse (in a friendly or unfriendly way), or one will beat the other. This world is too small for both of them.

What do most people want? What is that One Thing?

This means that anyone, anytime, anywhere can get on any computer, or game console, or pick up a cell phone and, with a single ID and password, access one's own homepage. That homepage will look either like iGoogle or like Facebook homepage. The default will be just fine, so your Web-innocent sister-in-law will find it useful and easy to use, but it will be very easy to modify to meet everyone's own needs and wants.

And there, all in one place, is everything you need and want: your Gmail, hotmail, yahoo mail, aol mail, AIM, local time, local weather, latest news from CNN, BBC, NPR and NYT, the cat photo of the day, your twitter, your Wall, a feed that shows what your friends are up to, your Skype or phone, portal to your island on Second Life, your blog, an RSS feed for news, an RSS feed for your favourite blogs, your RSS feed for latest Open Acces scientific papers with your keywords in them, your daily sudoku, your calendar and To Do list, your photo album, your podcast collection, your video collection, your music collection, your book library list, your Google Search, Google Blogsearch, Google Scholar, Google News, .... and all of that in one place, with a single ID and a single password, completely mobile.

Everything in one place - this is something that kids and grandmothers of techies are really looking for, and now techies themselves need to realize this simple little fact. Sooner or later, there will be no more New Shiny Objects to chase, as there will be only One Thing that everyone in the world is using. Like a phone. Or TV. Ubiquitous. Simple. Standardized. Foolproof.

And Vernor Vinge will be proven right once again.