What is the revolution of SNS

I belong to the kind of people who are excited when they see the word Revolution. Because I know that revolution means an era of destruction, another era of rebirth, revolution means the advent of opportunity. It seems that the popularity of Facebook and Twitter is proving that SNS will be the revolution of the Internet. However, since it is a revolution, there should be sacrifices, if even the opponents, then what else to talk about?

To answer this question, first of all, we need to understand the concept of "net". As I wrote before the blog, some people say Social receptacle service is the real person--social, also some people said SNS is a service--service, but very few people say SNS is net--network. To say "net", I start with the web.

The web is a network

One time I yelled on Twitter, "Who knows what the Web is?" "Got a couple of answers," connected (information + people), "Sharing your information, getting other people's information," and someone mentioned HTML. I further asked that "such a definition could not distinguish between the web and the Internet" and they were silent. I know for many people, does not seem to notice that the Web is only a widely used application on the Internet, this is a historical issue, and the birth of the web in the 90 compared to the world, China 95 years to realize the Internet, we have access to the web when the network has been in full swing, not feel The darkness in front of the web also doesn't feel the shock of web presence. And the web, so easy-to-use, that we use it every day, forget to explore what it is.

If you enter the Web as an English word into a Chinese-English dictionary, it gives an answer: "NET".

Now, as we go back to history, we look at the Web (1990) before the advent of the internet what it looks like: we have email (1982), FTP (1971), IRC (1988), Telnet (1969), BBS (1973). These applications can facilitate the sharing of information, but also a considerable user community, but the problem is also obvious, these scattered on the various host information can not be well organized, especially when the information needs to communicate across the site. In the era of not even a URL, an ordinary news on the Internet, can not refer to other sites of data, and even can not refer to their own station data. So the web turned up. Tim Berners has developed URLs, HTML with hyperlink, and HTTP protocols that make up the original Web architecture that solves the challenges of Cross-site data references and multimedia text display.

Hyperlinks from Wikipedia's homepage to other websites form a web

Back to the question at the beginning of this section--what is the web, I expect someone to mention hyperlink, hypertext, or web, because of the hyperlink of such an obscure concept that the Web can link information to form a revolutionary network of information.

SNS Network

First of all, please reader clear point: SNS as a network of information dissemination, its architecture is independent of the Web network and exist. I spent a lot of time stressing the web's characteristics, because in contrast, SNS is also a net. Just look at Facebook as a very hot web site. In fact, Facebook is simply using Web technology to implement its UI, and Twitter, which has a simpler architecture and a large number of tripartite clients, has started to exist independently from the Web.

From the connection to hyperlink link to the social link, from the station and the station between the reprint to people between the paste, SNS this net leather, it is the life of the Web network.

Facebook's user relationship makes up another web

In an interview with Cheng CEO, Cheng mentioned his vision of happy net: The first step is to use the Web game to accumulate users and user relations, the second is to paste, the information through SNS transmission, the third step is to make the user composed of the appropriate SNS, from the SNS people to obtain the necessary information, Ultimately defeating the current pattern of getting information through search engines. "Chinese operator" Cheng: Happy net defeat search engine?

The strategy of happy NET is consistent with Facebook in a way. When users find themselves spending more time on facebook/twitter than on traditional Web sites and more comprehensive information, and site managers find that traffic from Facebook is much larger than search engines and other ways, Facebook's ecological environment basically forms In a metaphor, Facebook has become an operating system on the Internet, and all other sites are content providers, and content is delivered to users ' necessary networks, provided by Facebook, just as Microsoft provides the communication between Windows Platform solutions software and hardware. Then a lot of Third-party software is based on Windows development.

Open graph is the product of Facebook under this strategy, and some call it the Semantic Web (the Facebook new Graph API launches – are you going to make a deal with the devil?). , but in my opinion, this is a key to open the barrier between Web and SNS network, so that the information that already exists and depend on the Web can be integrated into SNS net, and be organized again by people Center. This is an open Api,facebook expect a third party to depend on it, because the more companies that rely on it, the less likely it is to die.

For the tripartite site, Facebook is open to a user relationship and faces a choice.