Facebook, Amazon, Zynga Invest In Fund To Help Develop Social Web

[engine]

Facebook, Amazon, Zynga Invest In Fund To Help Develop Social Web [bbc.co.uk]

Facebook, Amazon and Zynga will invest in a fund to help entrepreneurs develop applications and services for a new era of the social web.

The lion's share of the sFund's $250m (£160m) will come from venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Details were announced at an event at Facebook's California headquarters.

"There's going to be an opportunity over the next five years or so to pick any industry and rethink it in a social way," said Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg.

[Hugene]

"There's going to be an opportunity over the next five years or so to pick any industry and rethink it in a social way,"

A statement devoid of any meaning. Reminds me of 2000's "rethink it in a web way", when they actually mean we have no idea or business plan.

But the web did change a lot of industries but most of the people who used to say that are out of business now.

[Webwork]

There's going to be an opportunity . . $250 million . . social way . .

Let's see. 1 billion human beings lacking a consistent sanitary drinking water source? $250 million?

Would that be a big enough "social opportunity", one worthy of the $250 million you have to throw around?

Social? Yeah. Got that. Right . . .

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Throw money at it, say some things that mean absolutely nothing, TADA!

Oh, wait, that didn't go off as planned, let me try again... TADA!

Meh, you're no more impressed than I am. Ahh well.

[Webwork]

How much VC money did it take to bring CraigsList to life and propel CL into the annals of online community history?

Which comes first in community building: love or money?

Which comes first in relationship: the love of "the other" or the love of "the opportunity"?

I know that any online community has bills to pay for apps, servers, admins, bandwidth, so I'm prepared to be explosed to whatever it takes to fund the operation. But when you add VCs to the math of community there's more to be paid, so, when it comes to new "communities" emerging I have questions I need to ask, such as: Will this be an exploit me a little or exploit me as much as I will tolerate operation?

Sorry, but nothing excites me less about the future of humankind than the idea that, in the future of humankind, the matter of relating to one another will slowly evolve to the "business of relating to one another", and therefore somewhere between "little i" and "you" will not only be software and servers and admins . . but such as are the values and interests of capitalism. Human relationship as human relationship capitalism.

And, yes, human relationship capitalism has been around for millenia but we have now evolved(?) to relationships and relating that is increasingly digital . . ergo relationships and relating being absorbed into the ecology of digital service providers . . . and all the baggage that brings with it: montoring, tracking, behavioral advertising, selling of "data" (you), etc.

We are already seeing the size of the first wave, that being the marketers drive to collect ALL your personal information as quickly as possible . . . before any concerted backlash . . . assuming we aren't slowly boiled to somnolence and personal privacy death before a possible movement "against" VC funded and driven human relationships AS capital investments takes hold.

Speaking of which . . anyone for a bit of personal branding consulting? What's the book value of your interpersonal good will - your personal brand - lately? :P

Think about it. Back away. Read the words and buzzwords that are slowly transforming . . commoditizing . . what it means to be . . human.