It is not really Facebook particularly, it is a general problem.
There is a deep structural opposition between the internet and the corporate/commercial model of the last 200 years since the industrial revolution. With the internet, the essence is connection: in all shapes and directions. With the corporation, the essence is centralisation: broadcast product one way, concentrate money the other way.
The 'conical' structure of the corporation can exist in the network structure of the internet, but the more cone-like it is, the less network-like it is.
In the late 80's and early 90's, people were talking about the finer grained capitalism in Japan. Groups inside corporations could develop working relationships with other groups inside the corporation or with outsourcers. That's also how it works in the US, but the corporation and divisions within large corporations act as barriers, making transactions and projects between such groups awkward.
From what I've seen, todays corporations should act more like a network and less like a monolithic entity. I've been inside one Fortune 500 company that tried to set top-down standards for software development. (All ye shall use this messaging, that database, this webserver, that programming language.) Everyone knew it was a joke and ignored it until it went away. I've been inside another corporation where the corporation merely mandated standards for sharing data between systems. As a result, the dynamic changed from everyone protecting their turf, to everyone trying to be as useful to as many others as possible.
Comments
It is not really Facebook particularly, it is a general problem.
There is a deep structural opposition between the internet and the corporate/commercial model of the last 200 years since the industrial revolution. With the internet, the essence is connection: in all shapes and directions. With the corporation, the essence is centralisation: broadcast product one way, concentrate money the other way.
The 'conical' structure of the corporation can exist in the network structure of the internet, but the more cone-like it is, the less network-like it is.
In the late 80's and early 90's, people were talking about the finer grained capitalism in Japan. Groups inside corporations could develop working relationships with other groups inside the corporation or with outsourcers. That's also how it works in the US, but the corporation and divisions within large corporations act as barriers, making transactions and projects between such groups awkward.
From what I've seen, todays corporations should act more like a network and less like a monolithic entity. I've been inside one Fortune 500 company that tried to set top-down standards for software development. (All ye shall use this messaging, that database, this webserver, that programming language.) Everyone knew it was a joke and ignored it until it went away. I've been inside another corporation where the corporation merely mandated standards for sharing data between systems. As a result, the dynamic changed from everyone protecting their turf, to everyone trying to be as useful to as many others as possible.