Take down the walls: twitting and facebookery

I've said before that what I don't like about facebook and similar is the fact that it does to the internet what shopping malls do to the high street: privatises public space. This article Dual Perspectives Article makes a pretty similar point. Helpfully it makes a comparison to AOL in the early days of internetification; AOL having attempting pretty much the same kind of thing but then having to give up in the face of the demand for raw internet rather than AOL's sanitised version of it. So, I'm pleased to read the following and hope it's right: "Leo Laporte, a broadcaster who runs the popular TWiT network of technology podcasts, calls the phenomenon 'the social silo,' and he doesn't think it can last much longer. 'People are pouring all this content and value into individual sites,' says Laporte, 'but they aren't going to want to keep dealing with Facebook, and Twitter, and FriendFeed, and whatever is next.' Laporte and Owyang agree that in order for the social web to move forward, the separate ecosystems which make it up need to unite.
Google has taken the first step toward knocking down the walls. Last week, the company announced, to great fanfare, something called Google Wave. It's an open platform for real-time communication and sharing media, and it's aimed directly at Facebook and Twitter. With Wave. any competent developer will have the tools build a Facebook or a Twitter — or more to the point, whatever comes next — and, even more important, any user content poured into a Wave-based system will be accessible by anyone that user has granted permission to have it"
Google Wave is not quite ready yet, but watch this space.