Remember the old AOL internet service?
Does anyone remember AOL? I mean the old AOL that stood for America On Line. The AOL that made the funny noise when you clicked it’s logo on your desktop and off you went flying toward cyberspace. Well the old AOL is dead now, but I’m sure it was the experience most people had when they first learned to sign on. I know my parents would remember AOL. My mother used to sign on every night and check the news from the list of links that popped up when she logged in. The only world she knew was the walled garden of America Online internet service.
Now you might wonder why I bring this computing era up today in 2010, well it’s because I feel like this is the same fate for our much loved Face Book. It is loved by this generation of mainstream computer users for the ability to connect and update everyone you might ever have contact with. Countless hours are spent reading updates, reviewing pictures, responding to silly questions, and playing games. The concern is that every one of these tasks, plus the myriad of other things I can’t even think to bring up, are all done in the walled garden that is Face Book. The owners have you locked down. All of your personal information in their databases, all of your attention and computing time can be done right in their world.
I’m not convinced that this is a bad thing. The generation of people who have grown knowing Facebook needed someone to guide their online presence, someone to teach them how to get these things online to share and to read. The restrictions inside facebook are good for that purpose. I know that the generation who is now entrenched in the facebook world could never have done it without the silver spoon to feed them and the critical mass of users to pave the way for even the least technically savvy.
So what’s next?
Personal websites are the future. A little home on the web for you to post your own family pictures and quirky stories. More freedom than a walled garden will allow, but still a controlled environment provided by good web hosting and a simple to use interface that everyone can learn easily. The next generation will want more flexibility and freedom, and it will be there for them.
Every day of my young life my father would say to me “Remember you are a DiAngelus”. He wanted us to do nothing to hurt our family name, and at the same time know that anything was possible because of he power of the good name. To this day I hear from people who knows my family and they will pass on stories about my grandfather’s refrigeration shop in Springfield or Exton, and how he gave them a job, or supplied turkeys for Thanksgiving.
So my vision is a generation who want to stay connected and show the world who they are, but do not want the limitations of AOL or Facebook. So build your personal website now, reserve your full name, nickname, or anything to represent you online. With the availibility of free domains and good web hosting services it should be a easy decision, don’t let Facebook control everything.