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Earth to facebook: people hate cable companies

Facebook’s VP of Product Marketing recently had several unbelievable things to say. Among them: “about 33 percent of Facebook application makers reported profits of up to $500,000 a month” — which is ludicrous — and:

“We view ourselves as a technology company at our core. We’re the cable company creating the pipes, and what they carry is social information and engagement information about people”

Two things about this irritate the hell of out of me. (The cable thing, not the $500k a month. That is just silly.)

First, the company carrying information to my laptop is an ISP — until free speedy wifi blankets the world, that is the level of information carrier I’m going to care about. If I’m going to think about pipes beyond that, I’m probably going to think in terms of protocols like RSS and HTTP. Not facebook. Second, social and engagement information about me and my friends is not some cable channel. They’ve got the metaphor wrong on so many levels it boggles my mind. Cable channels = passive consumption, for one thing. I may choose to broadcast social information (and I do, daily, on twitter and del.icio.us and flickr) but I don’t need Facebook for that.

Yeah, I’m a Facebook user but I’m starting to wonder why. I think it would be pretty damn easy to leave and not look back. Scrabulous is great, but I don’t have to play it there. I don’t need cable.

HA HA HA - what kind of company compares itself to a cable company??? Other than, perhaps, to say “here is how we are unlike cable companies”. DirecTV at least has a decent reputaion, but cable companies??!! Add that to the list of things I love to hate about Facebook.