I'm talking about a generation of kids growing up with technology. This isn't about the value of the network increasing as people use it. It's about a fundamental shift in one's worldview by encountering the technology during formative years. I'm basing much of this on Clotaire Rapaille's work, as described in his book, The Culture Code (http://www.amazon.com/Culture-Code-Ingenious-Understand-Peop...).
Rapaille conducted a study for Nestle. Nestle wanted to open up the Japanese market for hot chocolate. Using his research methods, Rapaille found that adult Japanese never formed early childhood impressions of chocolate, and so introducing chocolate products to Japan would fail miserably. As a result of the study, Nestle shifted its marketing strategy towards introducing chocolate to Japanese children, with the idea that twenty years down the road, they can sell chocolate products when they become adults.
Half a million daily Android activations means that a generation of children grows up encountering a personal computer in the form factor of a smartphone. Having come from the older generation, I still picture a desktop computer in my mind when I see the word "computer", despite working primarily with web technologies and cloud servers. To make sure my products do not become obsolete, I have to step into the shoes of someone who grew up picturing "smartphone" when someone says "computer". It means that any web/cloud application I make must be delivered on a smartphone first, with the desktop experience being an after-thought. I can live with that. That will mean twenty years from now, software development will mean keyboard-less IDEs, but I can still live with that.
I apply the same frame to these Facebook announcement. What is it like growing up where your first impressions of social dynamics is Facebook? I can separate my online identity because I entered my teenage years in the era of text-based MUDs and email. I had access to the internet when most of my friends do not know what it is. I could and did interact with adults. But a pre-teen or a teenager growing up now, knows that you can't separate the social identity like that. What, are you crazy?
What would a society with the unexamined assumption of "Facebook = Social" look like? One that accelerates the general trend for the past several generation: further isolation from the deep wisdom of previous generations; rites of passages conducted by clueless peers that end up in tragedy; a new life stage to describe young adults in their 20s to describe an extended childhood, much the way "teenage" was invented to describe the emergence of an extended childhood.
I do not like what I see in this thought-experiment. So while I might embrace the future when it comes with mobile devices, to this ... travesty ... called Facebook = Social, I say, "bah humbug."
(And next thing you know, I'll be walking out my front door with a cane, shaking a fist, "Dang kids! Get off my lawn!")
> The problem is 99% of people don't give a shit
This is especially true in the USA, at least according to "The Culture Code" https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Code-Ingenious-Understand-Peo...