Feeding the Zuck

MENLO PARK, CA, 19 July — Mixed reality artist Kristine Schomaker joined the iRez group of authors today and posted a wonderful report on her “Mixed Reality Haircut” from Saturday. In just a couple of hours the post had already received 33 “likes” on Facebook, and 4 “likes” here on the blog itself. That’s sort of interesting that her post got 800% more attention on Facebook than it did on the place that it actually is.

It makes perfect sense of course, the world’s largest social network is the new town square, and just because something is “done in congress,” doesn’t mean it can’t get even more discussion in the public square. An important difference however is that the traditional public square is “owned” by the community and the more you participate there, the richer the community is, but the new town squre, Facebook, is owned by a famous 28-year-old and his investors and friends and the more you participate there, the richer you make him.

Remember when Banksy pranked Paris Hilton’s CD and inserted the text “every CD you buy puts me even further out of your league”? Yeah. He should have put “Every ephemeral Facebook ‘like’ makes me a little bit richer and builds almost no community for you.” When you participate at a place like iRez, or StrawberrySingh.com, or Daniel Voyager’s blog, or Being Yordie Sands, or New World Notes, or Ironyca Stood in the Fire, or The Huffington Post, you help build a community there. When you participate at Facebook, yes you have easy, free access to the world’s greatest baby photo sharing site, but you don’t really build a community, you mostly just Feed The Zuck.