Robert Scoble kicked off his new web endeavor (Building 43) this week, including a great interview with Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook. But as I watched, there were a few questions that kept leaping forward, such as “is that an RC helicopter in the background?”
First off, kudos to Robert Scoble for Building 43. Great idea, nice design – I like what I’ve seen so far. And the kick-off interview (see the video below – go to 7:12 for the RC) with Facebook’s founder is a very good, relevant choice (and let’s face it, Facebook has class, MySpace not so much). But as I listened to the interview, during which a very open and interactive social networking model is presented for blending personal and business interests (including a nice set of points on the importance of knowing who your friends know), there were a few questions that kept leaping forward.
- Why, if information sharing is so important, do an increasing number of people opt for higher levels of privacy on their profiles?
- Why do so many people NOT link their Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts (sure, some may not know how, but I suspect many like to keep their “news blurps” separate from their “personal lives” which are separate from their “business lives” – in fact, I’ve even heard from more than a few friends that they wish there was an easy way to set up different security/privacy levels for sub-groups within their Facebook network to keep kids, parents and friends apart)?
- Do you really want all your friends to know who you’ve been buying things from on Craig’s List? Do they really want to be socially graphed?
And, most importantly
- Can Facebook really be the underlying glue, or platform, that binds the vast number of growing micro-social networks together?
So take a view – it’s an interview worth watching twice (just to follow the flying helicopter in the background).