Yes, Facebook is a crack dealer, and beloved Google is a Boy Scout.
Having grown up in St. Louis, AKA Most Dangerousville 2010 (suck it Detroit!), with a brother who was at one time a Cub Scout, I believe I can speak with authority on both points.
Let’s start with Facebook, which was once an exclusive, controlled network, grew in popularity among college kids, and is now a must-have for pretty much everybody. It has made a reputation of putting a cap in the competition, such as the gutting of drop.io in October and the slow strangling of MySpace, which has recently begged for an alliance. Even darling Gmail is in its sights.
Facebook has announced future plans of bringing all forms of communication together in the formation of a “message pool,” further cutting down the competition while drastically amplifying the users’ dependence upon it.
As you may or may not be aware, the National Crack Dealer’s Anthem is called “The First One’s Always Free.” The dealer comps an introductory sample as an investment in your future; that is, a future in which you are Craigslisting your refrigerator so that you can afford more and more of his product, which you feel with increasing intensity that you cannot live without.
This, I believe, is the plan for Facebook, which already owns some of your stuff, such as the pictures you host through it. Eventually when businesses begin using it as a standard communications platform and Joe Average starts vomiting from withdrawals while camping outside internet access, Facebook will conveniently introduce a fee, nominal at first but rising steadily over time, until you are choosing between using it and providing braces for your children.
Although Mark Zuckerberg looks clean cut with his fancy full set of teeth, this doesn’t prove he isn’t peddling FaceCrack. A lot of dealers don’t dip into their own product, such as Evan Williams, former CEO of Twitter, who didn’t bother tweeting the news of his resignation. Yes, Zuckerberg has a Facebook page, but so does the Kool-aid guy, and I’m pretty sure the giant pitcher of sugar water isn’t updating his status between his destructive episodes of bursting through living room walls.
Then again, Zuckerberg might just be a CrackFace too, as he shows some side effects akin to abusers of highly addictive substances, like his nervous sweating during an interview.
Google on the other hand is a saintly scout, willing to help anyone access information without asking for so much as a name.
Google is expanding just as rapidly, bringing people more information and innovation than their hearts could possibly desire. One day, Google will literally help an old lady cross the street, by directing the car she can’t see five feet in front of.
Employees of Google are treated like royalty, and they work together toward the primary goal of organizing information without doing evil.
Though many fatcats are willing to lay down heavy scrilla (that means money in exorbitant amounts) for its secret algorithm, Google has remained chaste in its efforts to conceal the formula. Yet, it caters to advertisers too with AdWords and Insights, essentially keeping the world fair and all the people within it happy.
Oh if a girl could marry a company…
Stay tuned for the next entry, “Ode to Google.”
WARNING: Some side effects may be experienced with Google as well.
