Today was a good day. I got to meet with serious leaders of the Internet economy, think Big Thoughts, and push my understanding of the world a bit. In short, I spent the day with folks I’ll be interviewing onstage at Web 2 next month, but also, with people who run companies that in one way or another are key partners and players in the ecosystem I love and in which my company (FM) works.
I started with a private meeting with a fellow who is taking time off from Google. Can’t say much more than that, but it was a great conversation. From there, I met with Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen. Now, I’ve got a lot more to say about Adobe, which recently purchased Omniture, but for now, trust me when I say, keep your eye on Adobe. Next, I met with Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz. And then, I met with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.
I noted an anecdotal observation to Sheryl – that I would write something here, tweet a notification of my post on Twitter, and that notification would then update my Facebook status through an app.
Then, I’d watch what happens. And what happens, more often than not, is that I’ll get as many if not more comments on the Facebook status update – inside Facebook – as I do on this site or on Twitter. And more often than not, those comments on Facebook are as thoughtful if not more thoughtful than the ones here. On Twitter, responses to posts here are more likely than not retweets, which is great, but not the same as a comment.
I asked Sheryl if she thought I was an outlier, expecting her to agree that in fact I was. But instead, she said the opposite: people like to comment on links referred through friend networks, and for good reason. It’s one thing to comment on blogs like this one, in relative anonymity. It’s quite another to comment in the context of Facebook, where those comments are seen by a group of folks with whom you have a social relationship.
I’d like to close that loop – show the comments locked in the Facebook domain on the site here – and I’m looking into getting that done. Let me know if you have any insight on how I might automate it.
Regardless, the implications are rather vast. Facebook has become a defacto leader in distribution of attention – just as Google was back in 2004-6. And everyone – trust me, everyone – is paying attention. Twitter is also a major distributor of attention, but Facebook dwarfs Twitter in terms of social media sharing. I’ve got a lot more to say about this, but let me mark it this way: With search, we declared private intention, then chose our links to click.
With social media, we publicly declare our intentions and our links. It’s a shift of models that is very, very meaningful. More on that later.
And, by the way, Sheryl and I spoke about a lot more than closing the loops on comments. But for more on that, you’ll have to wait for Web 2!