A VC - Latest Comments in The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

Re: The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

Thomas — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:59:06 -0000

Don't forget though, that FB is also taking on the cost of building the house, so to speak. And as this medium becomes more democratized, the masses may opt for the automated platform. Not many people have the capacity to buy WP, hire a web guy to install it, get it hosted and SEO it.
Now, that's not saying that WP couldn't evolve the model to make this easier...

Re: The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

johndodds — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:44:57 -0000

And you're absolutely right on that Fred. The audience here and on other blogs are united by an interest in a subject matter (here it's generally serious, on others it can be totally frivolous) that has nothing to do with existing social networks of the real world variety though, of course, there is some overlap.

That interest may be professional, intellectual or simply diversional but has the potential to cement connections that can and do extend into other social networks such as FB and in my experience into real life. Bottom line, we all have different social networks in our lives and their relative importance changes over time (which I think may represent a threat to FB) - blogging is more adaptable and long ago stopped being about the technorati 100 or indeed the tech world alone. From the point of view of the participants, size is no longer as important as it used to be. The power and relative usefulness/enjoyment of a network is correlated with the "quality"of its nodes more than their quantity.

Re: The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

Pete — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 23:16:00 -0000

I am someone who is buidling a blogging/search platform:

http://localhero.biz/

and has deployed wordpress for several websites on a consulting basis.

I think there are a few issues.

Ultimately open platforms/software will win as they are so much more flexible and you ownnn your own data. I believe wordpress is one of the better platforms but as far as I can tell it is missing alot of features (content versioning, an api, a spider/feed reader, different content formats) which are essential for support of the next generation of products. Its a very good blogging platform but the future is integrating blogging with so much more.

Re: The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

Gloria — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:33:19 -0000

Facebook already offers blogging as an explicit feature. It's called "notes." You can write notes, tag your friends as part of a conversation kick-off, comment on notes, and post other people's notes to your profile.

But the vast majority of Facebook users don't use it. Here's my current News Feed breaks down:

- 6 events
- 8 photo uploads or comments
- 1 gift
- 1 ad
- 1 posted link

...drumroll, please...

- 0 notes

This tells me that even in a super-connected, social environment, most of my 20-something peers aren't and won't be blog writers in the "traditional" longer posts and publishing sense.

Still -- many of us non-blog-writers read blogs. And there is hugely important value there.

Re: The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

fredwilson — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 11:12:02 -0000

Maybe what I enjoy and too many others don't is a community on this blog and
maybe that clouds my view of the intersection of blogging and social
networking, but I still think its coming

fred

Re: The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

Rex Hammock — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 11:01:03 -0000

And that's why I'm a happy user of tumblr and use it for rexhammock.com.

Re: The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

Robert John Ed — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 10:58:37 -0000

I just wanted to say that Fred's audience here is truly amazing. I really enjoy reading all of the intelligent conversation and strings that stem from Fred's blog. Bravo. I'm going to think a bit about blogging as well as online social networking and write a bit more on it.

Re: The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

slowblogger — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 09:06:48 -0000

I agree with you. Blogging will exist for a long time, and some social networks may not. There seems significant gap in value provided and the value financial market assigns right now. Hope you to rethink about freeconomics (or freemium, or whatever) as well.

Re: The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

slowblogger — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 09:04:13 -0000

Re: The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

slowblogger — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 09:02:52 -0000

Re: The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

slowblogger — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 09:02:39 -0000

Re: The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

Ada — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 08:00:02 -0000

I wonder if here is some kind of crossover that could be developed maybe a facebook application, which would aggregate your status updates.

Re: The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

Ada — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 07:58:36 -0000

I've recently experienced an increase in status updates on facebook, so I definitely the mainstream populations is warming up to the tumblog and blogging concept!

Re: The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

reece — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 02:14:16 -0000

As a 25 year old, very early adopter of Facebook (one of the first 5 schools to get it), I can vouch that my usage has remained quite consistent in the four years since I signed up. Sure, it has waned at times - and I agree with Vassilis that the "freshness is gone," but what remains are the connections which keep me attached. Will I still be using Facebook when I'm 30? No idea, but FB is doing a great job of trying to continually develop these connections with their bite of LinkedIn's "People you may know" feature. I'm now getting friend requests from people I haven't seen in years, and - a particular example which speaks to the age of FB users - former high school teachers.

Re: The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

anon — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 19:02:16 -0000

The difference is facebook is outrageously overvalued.

Re: The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

Ernest Chipset — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 14:39:48 -0000

About $14,800,000 I guess.

Re: The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

Shreshth — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 14:39:45 -0000

from what i understand, facebook is 'Growing Up', 40% of facebook users, who were originally college students have now graduated and are part of ADULT social networking environment. Hence, saying that facebook is just for young folks is not entirely correct.
Also, fb is realizing that many of these users dont like to much advertising or viral marketing (inviting friends), mature audience wants Privacy, while engaging in serious conversations in GROUPS which can be used as BLOGs or discussion groups. hence, FB is growing up with them.
The idea of opening gates by API, has given them a chance to just lengthen their 'COOL' factor amongst users, the mundane applications will soon vaporize, and fb would be picking up the sustainable ones itself to strengthen the platform for long term.

Re: The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

Ethan Bauley — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 13:39:00 -0000

ya, the text-selecting=quote feature of the Tumblr bookmarklet was the killer app for me...

Re: The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

fredwilson — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 13:23:03 -0000

I love posting songs and photos to tumblr and reblogging other's photos, songs, and especially quotes

Fred

Re: The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

zachlandes — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 13:04:41 -0000

Ah yes, this is noticeably true. Of course, in the long term even with application spam it would be inevitable that the applications people use and stick with are those that they would have a tendency to seek out themselves/have a real use for. It is few in thousands of "for-fun-only" applications that see long term sustainability as a result of the viral application spread on facebook. I quickly abandon at least 9/10 applications after adding them.

Re: The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

Alex Iskold — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 10:55:36 -0000

Yep, yes, I do. I'd say it falls in between. Oddly, I have not been compelled to use it lately... I think that it lacks structure and organization too much for the structured freak like me...

At some point I wanted Tumblr to be my "soul" like books. music, movies, pictures, etc. but then I found that I have to do constant uploading, etc. - i.e. work. So I now think that Tumblr is more like FriendFeed, but still needs more out of the box stuff to engage people constantly.

Overall, I feel like all of these are for different people - there are stuff to be done on Wordpress, on tumblr and Facebook, just not the same stuff...

Re: The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

fredwilson — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 10:52:03 -0000

Oops. I didn't realize it was alex. Clearly you know all about tumblr

Re: The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

fredwilson — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 10:51:02 -0000

Try tumblr and I think you might change your view of what blogging is or at least what it can be

Fred

Re: The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 09:00:43 -0000

isn't this an indication of the kind of monetizable data beyond basic traffic data? as others have pointed out, one's a community platform and the other, publishing, thus two very different kinds of resulting data. fb has a lot of modular / granular data about each user, whereas wp produces more fuzzy data (ie blog posts, tags, etc).

even if both networks had the same eyeballs and / or users, it would stand to reason that they'd be valuated differently.

Re: The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

Alex Iskold — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 08:46:38 -0000

In this case my prediction is never. Blogs and FB are different and both necessary for diff audience. I would argue that blogs are for more savvy people who are looking for richer content. To me blogging is more about journalism with feedback in the end then networking.