Facebook’s “walled garden” strategy is sometimes annoying. I was thinking it would be nice to have a little social aspect to my blog. I can create a group related to my blog on Facebook, but to join the group or see who’s a member etc, you actually have to go to the Facebook site. I doubt that many people will be bothered to do that. Instead I’d like to have a little widget on my own site where people can sign up to the group and easily view the members and any other data related to the group. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be possible, as Facebook wants to keep people coming back to facebook.com.

I agree with The Economist that this is going to backfire for Facebook. There’s nothing special about social networking that means it must be embedded only in facebook.com. The same idea could be set free, “widgetized” and embedded anywhere. A more open and “sociable” platform could easily become more attractive than Facebook’s garden. Such a platform would probably be a lot harder to monetise than a garden that generates a lot of traffic, but it would certainly be a lot more useful.