Tag Archives: facebook

Facebook Solar Array Demonstrates Impotence of Solar Power, Importance of Power Management

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The debate over the so-called “environmental impact” of data centers provides an easy target for environmentalists to pick on — big creepy corporations like Facebook and Apple.  While these folks sleep at night with their hot water tanks cranked to the max and half the lights in their houses still turned on, companies that run big data centers get needled for using a lot of electricity.   Yet just try to take away these people’s iPhones and Facebook games–then stand back and watch the intellectual dishonesty spill out like a broken water balloon.

The answer, of course, is solar power. Clean, silent, low-maintenance, and emissions-free.  Well, sort-of.  But Wired tells us today that solar farms aren’t efficient. Based on their figures, I decided to extrapolate a few solar farm scenarios.

Facebook’s data center is a 100-megawatt consumer, and its solar array, which spans acres and acres in the Oregon outback, puts out a mere .05 megawatts at an average energy conversion efficiency of about 14%. Apple’s planned N.C. solar farm will cost 180 acres of God’s green earth and will put out just 3.5 megawatts at typical efficiency (Apple will require at least 70 MW at their N.C. data center). Using those ratios, and keeping in mind that these are the best, most efficient solar generators on the planet, we could estimate that:

  • A typical .3 kw household would require 0.154 acre of this top-of-the-line solar technology. That would fill a typical suburban lot, and leave no room for the house. Underground housing, anybody?
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  • A typical 3.5 acre city block, containing 16 households, would require 2.5 acres of solar array. Yep–two and a half football fields. (BTW, forget about trees in that neighborhood.)
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  • New York City, some 325 square miles in size, if it were filled only with these houses, would require a solar array the size of Chicago, which weighs in at about 250 square miles.
  • The United States would require about three states the size of Texas filled only with solar farms and nothing else to fulfill its electricity needs. The distribution system for this electricity (power lines, AC turbines, etc.) would require a further two states the size of Colorado.

My conclusions:

  • Mass-market electrical consumption cannot be serviced by solar generation without regulated rationing. Most Americans would not be in love with this idea.
  • The obsession with solar energy has as much to do with politics as it does with shrinking the fossil fuel industries.
  • Data centers should concentrate, if they believe fossil and nuclear power generation are harmful to humanity, on reducing their consumption of electricity.

Don’t confuse hyper-private with offline.

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The assertion that Facebook can protect its market leading position by entering into the smaller-is-bigger philosophy or going async (a la Twitter) is nifty, but not the answer to “what’s wrong on the Internet”.

After reading Dave McClure’s post, subtitled “How to Take Down Facebook”, I think that, between all the f-bombs and Generation Z three-letter acronyms, Dave makes a few good points.  For example, Twitter is better for following famous people (to which I would counter, Facebook is better for enabling fame).

Dave wants to see Facebook become an enabler of more private communities.  To his burrito point, we could say that Facebook alerady does this through threaded, instant mail messaging.  We could also respond to his friend overload point that perhaps Dave doesn’t know how to manage his profile privacy settings, or that perhaps Dave should start a Fan Page and whittle down his friend relationships to the bare essentials.

Bottom line is, true intimacy in relationships cannot be fostered by an inorganic structure like Facebook, in my opinion.  Intimacy is about mutual experiences, not a mutual sounding board.  We all have telephones–does this make us more intimate in our relationships than when we’re together, shoulder-to-shoulder, or working on the same outcome as a team?  Hardly.  Facebook is merely a platform for communication, and while it plays a role in enabling quality relationships, it is certainly a subserviant role.

My advice to Dave McClure is, you probably don’t have 2000 actual friends, so fix it. Delete. Delete. Delete.

But to give up those synchronous connections on Facebook is to give up the influence that comes with having a large audience.  And herein lies the real challenge, if I can rephrase what Dave is saying here into something a little more succinct: Facebook is mediocre at protecting the privacy of celebrities, while Twitter is very good.

The effect of this can be seen in Facebook’s inability to provide more intimate connections, and in Twitter’s ability to prevent celebrities from having to spill anything more than they’d like to on their profile.

Rebooted MySpace is what Ping Should’ve Been

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Coming from a small business owner in humble Cleveland, Ohio, the strategic guidance I might give Steve Jobs on his (sad) attempt at building a walled garden social network would be this: sometime it’s better to join than fight. If Apple can’t get its mits on Facebook, it should seriously consider taking over MySpace from News Corp.  In fact, News Corp. has already outed the price tag at $300,000,000, though I think that by the time any potential deal might be struck, that price may come down.  The Facebook train just shifted into fifth gear, after all.

Once upon a time, iTunes had the opportunity to become “indyTunes“, and totally missed the boat.  Right now, MySpace is the MP3.com of the 2.0 era, offering indies more than Apple does in terms of self-service distribution and exposure.  With this rebooted MySpace, a very immersive, very commercialized, very polished experience is in order.  Same idea as iTunes, except that iTunes isn’t nearly as immersive as it could be. Problem one is DRM, which has stimied iTunes’ ability to become totally web-based.  Problem two is Steve, who wants so much control over the ecosystem that he’s not likely, in my opinion, to expand Ping to the wild wild web.

That said, I still think MySpace’s new look rock concert skin is just the veil for the real goods: an audience for Ping.  If Apple wants in on that action, they’re going to have to pick sides, and if Facebook is as snot-nosed as I’ve read regarding Steve, then MySpace might be ripe for the picking.

The Church of Facebook

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Imagine a world in which Facebook causes you to do good for humanity.  Oh wait, you say–you’re already a decent person who does decent things!  Of course you are.  Yet Facebook’s eternally silly Superpoke application is dismissed as silly because two better examples of social networking’s elusive fruits exist: electing Barack Obama and meeting in groups of twenty to talk about finances.  Srsly?

Come on people!  The reason Obama was elected is this: 2x the “McCain’s a dud candidate” than “Obama for iPhone rocks”.   And people have long worked in groups to dissect social economics.  It’s called Economics 101–you might’ve even attended it yourself when you were in college. Churches and synagogues offer personal economics ministries–and so do tax planners, for that matter.

If we’re looking for shining examples of how social networking is going to change the world, are these really the ones we’re putting on a pedestal?   The article I linked to espouses admiration to people who do good things and get virtual karma points, all because of social networking.  A-hem.  Human decency doesn’t need Facebook.

We’re searching, it seems, for some greater purpose to social media. But why do we have to think we’re going to solve world hunger because of Web 2.0. Why can’t it just be fun?

EventBox totally rocks

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I saw Luca’s tweet about EventBox, and he’s absolutely right.  This program is super cool.  It’s for managing tweets, rss updates, facebook updates, etc etc all in one place.  So far I’m loving it. Growl notifications for updates, heads-up display.  Really cool.  Grab a copy yourself if you’re running OS X 10.5 and let me know how you like it.

Skype as Facebook, and a quick counterpoint

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Luca posted a great blog today, about how Skype has a way to become a social networking powerhouse, a la Facebook.  Interestingly, it was on Facebook that I saw Luca’s tweet about the new post:

All that above together with the new features introduced with Skype 2.8 for Mac made me wonder: can Skype ever become the next big thing in the field of “social networking” rather than “only” the most popular VoIP service ever? Let’s try to analyze how far Skype is from this “big picture”.

Users are not certainly a problem for Skype. With over 200M users (not active, but downloads), it’s not far from the huge 150M active users of Facebook. What Facebook is missing at this time is a powerful desktop client. Despite the world of consumer services is moving to the “cloud”, having an always on client on your PC has many benefits, such as being always available and experiencing a realtime interaction with your friends.

I don’t know if a desktop client is the best place to do social activity management.  The browser is good for what’s it’s good for: rich browsing experiences.  But I don’t want to change the form factor of the IM client just to accomodate a feed list or yet another messaging utility.  Skype needs to stay in the same size and shape it has now: on the right side of my screen, occupying maybe 10% of my real estate.

Plus, the other thing that’s cool about Facebook is that nothing has to be immediate.  The realtime nature of Skype conversations is precisely why I’d sometimes rather communicate on Facebook, or e-mail, etc.  But please read Luca’s post, as it is a really cool idea that warrants deeper inspection.

2008 in Review: Twitter, PS Home, VoIP, and more

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Well, it’s the time of year again.  Time to look back, and forward.

2008: the harbinger year for a revolution in the telecom industry?  No, not exactly.  Nor was 2008 the year of action of for end-to-end VoIP.  But 2008 was a good year for me.   I more or less quit consulting on VoIP, as the majority of clients who need help with VoIP are too small for my firm, and the top 5% of clients available in the field are too big for it.  The in-betweeners are dominated by a group of recruiters who beat each other up and submit VoIP candidates to internal employment positions I can’t be interested in.

Twitter was an interesting subject, retrospectively, in 2008.  On one hand it’s dying at the hands of Facebook. On the other hand, it’s got so much vigor and a following, too.  Twitter is one of those things that, even as an objectively expert witness on the subject of social media, I still struggle to grasp.  I wonder what the sex appeal is, minus all the fluff of a LinkedIn or a Facebook, of Twitter.

Sony launched a social network for the PS3.  The world essentially yawned, already beaten to death with the concept as previously implemented by things like Second Life, Sims Online, and World of Warcraft.  Now, if Nintendo had launched a social network along the lines of Animal Crossing–now that might be cool.

I received a pool table and air hockey table for Christmas and have nowhere to put either of them. At the moment my basement is full.  My son wants me to move the foozball table to the living room. A-hem. Kids take a while to develop decorating taste, I guess. Maybe in 2009.