The new facebook has been getting its usual level of pushback for its new interface design. One of the more interesting, if not stark, comments that appeared on my feed was the following:
Is it a coincidence that facebook becomes more like myspace right when google+ becomes available?
The short answer: No. The long answer:
Google and Facebook* aren’t direct competitors. Google has two primary ad platforms, which is its core source of cash: search and display. When you decided to join Google+, you checked off a box to allow your data/posts to be used in advertising. That data isn’t being fed back into social ads. It is being fed back into search and display ad targeting data. None of these ad types actually occur (for now) on Google+. In fact, I believe all the display ads that Google handles never actually appear on a Google site. Considering that the data from these individual sites are often fed back into Google, (alongside say Neilsen Data) for ad purchasing reasons, open web data becomes really important for Google’s continual functioning. That data includes, from Google’s perspective, social data signals (which Facebook hides). Google+ is a way of recapturing that data.
Meanwhile, Facebook makes its money through two very distinct ways: Social Ads and Facebook Credits. Both of these forms of revenue only work on Facebook (You’ll never see a Facebook ad somewhere that is not Facebook, and there are little or no practical uses of Facebook credits outside of Facebook). In order to make money (or continue to make money) Facebook has to make sure you spend lots of time on Facebook, feeding data about stuff you like directly into Facebook (rather than the open web), so that it can make money.
As a result, Facebook has to become more like old AOL and MySpace. It’s model hinges of eyeballs staying on Facebook for long periods of time. Similarly, at their peaks, Myspace and AOL developed models where they had people staying on site (or in their dialup provider’s playground) for long periods of time. It was a model where the viral development of eyeballs meant money.
This model eventually killed both services. Because they were beholden to the eyeballs, they ruined their site architecture with “things” to do, things that bloated the experience (and in AOL’s case, made it expensive to use compared to a straight connection using a Cable Modem). These “things” may have caused more interactions, but these very same interactions ended up driving users crazy and caused them to move onto the next service. AOL and Myspace both mistook viral eyeball time as being meaningful only when time was spent on site. Users, however, drove time on site by increasing social connections with each other. When more features that didn’t help complete the goal (being with friends), users left for simpler services that did provide the same social stickyness with a simpler featureset.
Unless you are a magazine or a newspaper and can figure out how to place ads that match your content online, it never seems to pay in the long term to try and make money off of eyeballs. There is always some who will regather those eyeballs as your service becomes uncool and unusable. Facebook may be able to survive only because of their humongous demographic base- but except a slow attrition as people find alternatives that satisfy what they are looking for.
*Exception: If Facebook buys 33Across. They have the cash cushion to do so.
Seeing “Henry V”
Due to the interventions of a redditor, I managed to see Henry V (aka one Shakespeare’s meddlesome “histories”) at the Irondale Ensemble Project, in Brooklyn, near BAM, this past Saturday night. They specialize in ensemble theater, which has its pluses (a small variety of actors playing a wide variety of roles) and its minuses( a small variety of actors playing a wide variety of roles), in a large space that formerly belonged to a Sunday School.
While the stage was set up to be very intimate (I was in the 3rd row of 6 possible rows in a three quarters round), the actual setup took place in a much more cavernous room that took up about three floors. While the lack of decor in a huge room makes the space seem gorgeous, this turned out to be a problem, as the walls were made of either brick or stone, and the space ended up sucking up much of actors voices. Since I was unfamiliar with this Shakespeare play (bad Shana), as well as the history behind Henry V (even more bad Shana), the loss of sound made the play harder to follow. Note to those who go, you are there to concentrate on the show, not the way the actors sound, so sitting in the front row may be a plus.
As with much of Shakespeare, from what I caught of it, there was some brilliant lines and brilliant character developments. The best monologue clearly went to the person playing Henry with his St. Crispin’s Day speech. The actor playing it pulled off a rousing effort, though overall he was a middling actor, riding with his stage presence and voice rather than bringing the character to life. There was one other actor, Gabriel King, who was a total standout as a character actor. He mastered his Captain Fullen, and made the character expressive: he is exactly what one would think a humorously grizzled solider in a Shakespeare play would be like. He also showed range with his other roles, such as the Bishop of Ely. Meanwhile, he did his many roles without taking away from the other actors in scene. If anything, he made them seem stronger.
Overall, I don’t have much bad to say about the staging. Or good. it wasn’t cutting edge, but nor was it distracting. It was there, and it worked to highlight the dramatic moments, the sad moments, the happy momements, and the humorous moments. It was classical shakespeare in its sparity. Meanwhile the costuming was finely edited street clothes and white shirts, which suited the play fine. Nothing spectacular, but also nothing distracting.
Would I recommend it – I’m not sure. I think overall the ensemble was well assembled, if a tad small in number for the sheer amount of roles to follow. I thought the space was a bigger issue, as well as my lack of background on the real Henry V and the play. For a non-Shakespeare company, they did a more than fair job. Had they been a Shakespeare exclusive company, I think I would have passed.