It looks like a pile of the ScotEdubloggers are holidaying on facebook.

I was invited a few weeks ago and joined up.
Compared to bebo and myspace the interface is pretty calm. I’ve messed about with a few tools and gained a few friends but I have not been convinced.

I was planning to blog something about this, but serendipitously in this morning guardian I saw Jack Scofield’s article: If Facebook is just this year’s version of AOL, is that bad? which linked to Facebook is the new AOL (kottke.org) which I followed to Facebook vs. AOL, redux (kottke.org).
Kottle pretty much sums up my feelings:

As it happens, we already have a platform on which anyone can communicate and collaborate with anyone else, individuals and companies can develop applications which can interoperate with one another through open and freely available tools, protocols, and interfaces. It’s called the internet and it’s more compelling than AOL was in 1994 and Facebook in 2007

and

If you’re not a Facebook user, you can’t do anything with the site…nearly everything published by their users is private.

The bit about blogs and Web 2.0 I really like is the fact that most of them produce rss, which is the basis of the Small Pieces Loosely Joined argument. (I am guessing as I’ve never read the book, but the title sounds cool).

Facebook seems fine, fun etc but it misses the serendipity and easy linking and mashing of data. From my, admittedly very limited experience, it seems you can pull information into facebook but not get too much out.

With more open tools it is easy to gather, mix and redistribute information, blogs, wiki updates, podcasts, flickr, del.icio.us etc. can all be mashed with existing tools or a bit of scripting. Facebook seems exclusive rather than inclusive, closed rather than open. I am happy to vist but I would not want to live there.

Or am I missing something?

facebook rss blogging web2.0