Go out with a group of friends and notice how many times Facebook crops up. Did you see it on Facebook… don’t put that on Facebook… I read about your holiday on Facebook… are you on Facebook (instead of the hassle of swapping mobile numbers). It really is becoming ubiquitous with socialising.

Where there are customers, companies will follow suit (like lions to the zebra). Every vertical from retail to radio; from celebrity to cinema are clambering to get aboard the good ship Zuckerberg.

Simple example: the Radio 1 Xtra blog is now their Facebook page. The BBC has scores of blogs and other social media eye candy but Facebook makes it easier for people to comment (and spam), to ‘like’, to interact with. This equals an increase in engagement – isn’t that the Holy Grail that marketers crave so badly?

What’s the problem then? Well, after flipping their privacy policy three times, Facebook has the same level of trust as your average politician. A-list tech folks have deleted their accounts in protest. Well, they tried. It’s a lot harder than you’d think.

So, crucially, whose data is it? Facebook would say it’s yours, but this difficulty in exporting/copying your data and then deleting what Facebook and its partner sites are holding for you says otherwise.

It also looks awful and if every site ends up migrating there my brain will melt from the bland sameness that threatens my screen. The explosion of the web is more than partly to do with the fact that individuals have become the creators – the publishers. Instead of doing this individually through their own HTML skills, or via blogs or micro sites, we’re facing the Borg. Star Trek fan or not, do you really want to join the Borg?

Regardless of shelving your existing content and only publishing on Facebook, there’s a real possibility that Facebook becomes the portal to the web. You can vote by liking items all over the web but there will be a covert element to this because data and consumer habits, along with profiling, is pure fertiliser to the advertiser.

You’ll also stay logged in and even though you go off and surf elsewhere, because you’re logged in, all your habits and actions are registered. Google are extremely clever with their AdSense but Facebook threatens to become so clued in as to make AdSense look like an abacus versus a scientific calculator.

Virtual currency, micro money, Facebook Connect, store fronts, adverts, gaming and the ever growing social graph (The Open Graph as Facebook call it) etc, etc mean Facebook is THE force to be reckoned with online.

A crucial argument from the protesters is that the pure web is open. Facebook are closed and – arguably – they stand to gain more by remaining closed. Come behind our walled garden, fertilise our product by increasing your interaction, and growing the whole ecosystem, and we’ll cash in from your data. Incidentally it’s the same data that we keep changing our privacy policy on.

Some would say it’s giving the web over to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and CEO. My problem isn’t necessarily with Zuckerberg’s leadership; the moneymen will be sure to right that ship. My problem is the possibility of it becoming the de facto site on the Internet.

Facebook has an amazing product. It’s staggering in size and hugely successful. If you’d built something 1,000th the size then you could pat yourself on the back for a monumental achievement. But if the populous web migrates there, I for one will be calling on Captain Kirk to save the day and defeat the Borg.

How many Microsoft Office users really exhaust the package, employing it as its designers dreamt they would? Not very many.

How many stretch the package to more than even 25% of its functional capacity? I’d be very surprised if it’s more than one in twenty.

It’s probably about the same ratio as 4×4 owners who’ve actually taken their off-roaders off road and Porsche owners who double-declutch – very slim indeed.

Let’s imagine you’re a newly launched SME with a small office needing to equip four computers. With Office 2007 Small Business costing around £350 for the standard version, you’re down £1,400 before any other costs, like the hardware itself and networking etc. You want to be honourable (and safe) with the licence keys but struggle with the expense.

Well, Google docs is the MX5 (to continue the car metaphor) of the office world: smaller, lighter, more nimble and less bloated on superfluous features. GD is the retractable pencil, not the NASA ballpoint pen – frugal function, not fancy fluff. Until now, I wouldn’t have said GD was an Office killer but the latest feature upgrades this week have me thinking this is a genuine alternative. And the collaboration features are a real boon (work from home and share a file with someone at the office live). Check it out:

BTW: it’s official, Google now counts site speed as a ranking factor.

I have been using more and more of Bing lately because: a) Microsoft c0-sponsor Jason Calacanis’s TWiST show (gotta thank the sponsors, right?) and, B) they’re doing some great, underrated stuff.

Check out this video from TED presented by Blaise Aguera. I know it’s about maps not search but it’s a good barometer of how bleeding edge Microsoft are lately and how they want to stick it to Google.

Take a look at Bing and leave the G thing alone for a week. It’s truly invigorating.

Some links worthy of a click or two:
http://www.bing.com/twitter (a beta look at Twitter integration that’s surely just around the corner)
http://bing.com/maps/explore (the maps link)
http://silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight-4-beta/#tools (also needed to get maps working

I posted previously about how I saw the web unfolding in 2010. One of my pointers was about on-site search and how bad it is in general. I recommended that the big players team up with the search engines to get it right.

Well, Google beat me to the deadline and launched its Google Commerce search offering toward the end of 2009, not 2010. I’ll be really interested to see who takes this on and how the technology (and partnership) affects their sites.

At $50,000+, it costs more than most SMEs would have in their site development budgets and I’m not sure the M&Ss or Nexts of the world would ever really incorporate it, but what a great plug in.

On the right -
Prevent search engines from indexing news content and have readers pay through a variety of subscriptions to recoup lost earnings from physical news sales. People have no right to free journalism and aggregator sites (especially Google News) are to news, what Pirate Bay is to music.

On the left –
If you build it they will come. The internet is an unparalleled open space where the common good is freedom of information without class divides. If providers open their content equally the market will ensure the winners are the cream of crop. Revenue will be made through increased attention and trust.

Further right against ‘Don’t be evil’ -
Stop the Google vampire by embracing its largest competitor instead – Microsoft’s Bing.

If Bing courted enough content providers to bed exclusively with them (by paying, say, the world’s top 50 newspapers and top 1,000 magazines) that would be a huge boon. Would it be enough to grab 10 or 15 percent of market share?

Of course it’s all about money for Murdoch, not attention and that’s where he and the digerati are looking at same issue from different ends.

A lot has been made of Eric Schmidt resigning from Apple’s board. The short version: he’s also CEO of Google and these two tech giants are really starting to cross swords.

While Google are undoubtedly an increasing ‘problem’ for Apple, I think most reports are in danger of missing the elephant in the room: Nokia. They have a 40% market share of the world’s mobile handset market. They produce a phone every 13 seconds, with around 1.1 billion customers today, and they are well and truly on a charge.

Nokia are unquestionably number one – larger than their top three rivals combined – yet they were accused of being asleep at the wheel when it came to the iPhone. Enter the Nokia N900 Smartbook, launched this week with, “Computer-grade performance in a handset” and Flash support (not yet available on the iPhone).

Microsoft’s mobile version of the Office suite, currently only available on Windows mobile devices, is soon to be available on Nokia handsets. And Microsoft and Nokia plan on developing several mobile apps together.

Apple fans have consumed rumours about Mr Jobs producing a tablet computer for several years but it’s yet to materialise. Enter Nokia’s booklet. Add to this momentum the fact they appear to be teaming up with music rather than dictate to the industry. Dave Stewart (50% of the Eurythmics group) is a change agent and big fettler in the Nokia world of the future.

Nokia are a capable chameleon. They’ve reinvented themselves from a paper and rubber manufacturer to an electronic giant turning over $70 billion. So when they say, “we will quickly be the world’s biggest entertainment media network.” we should really pay attention.

Their aptitude, coupled with some audacious strategic alliances may yet see CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo pull off a Finnish coup d’état.

A while ago, I had the pleasure of listening to Google’s Robert Swerling talk saliently about site design. The brief version of his presentation:

1. Velocity – give it fast and let them get on with other things
2. Visibility – don’t surprise consumers
3. Value – provide real value
4. Variation – never come out of beta (love that line)

As I find myself saying more often: business is mostly simple; but it’s not easy.

Well, that’s my prediction. They’ll stop burning dollars acquiring paper mills and fork out $750+ million for Twitter.

Twitter is the most popular and certainly the most talked about social media tool of the moment, yet there’s no clear indication on how they’ll monetise the whole shebang. They raised another $35 million in venture capital last month but to what end?

If you concede that Google want to know far more about you and your digital habits along with the world at large, this source would make an obvious acquisition. The speed at which trends and news appear on Twitter is unmatched elsewhere on the web. Google could leverage this into their algorithm and gain much more real-time searching (certainly opposed to Google News).

Of course, we’re not privy to the magic that’s being created right now in Mountain View where Google’s rocket scientists wave their wands over the web with reckless talent. Have they got a Twitter-killer waiting in the wings? Personally I doubt it. And if they have, will it be another Google Video which was always the poor cousin to YouTube – remember Google later bought YouTube purely to get that online video foothold?

They’re into harvesting strategies and don’t need to monetise everything immediately. Again, YouTube teaches us that. So the lack of income at Twitter won’t be such a problem; the data is the treasure worth the capital outlay. Although, Twitter wont keep its monopoly forever – when you show the market what’s it’s capable of, it rarely stands and applauds for long. Immitation is immenant.

Then again, others might get to the buy-out first. Facebook is reported to have offered $500 million and Carol Bartz could do with creating some buzz about Yahoo other than dismal reports of staff exoduses. Either of these firms would be salivating at the thought of gaining those 6 million Twitterers and all that live data.

What do you reckon? Do you think Google will crush Twitter, buy Twitter or just look at it like a play-thing in the corner?

Google launched some really innovative services in November. Here’s a quick video round up:

1. Search Wiki:

I’m not sure I’m ‘feeling this’ but its going to be interesting to see how the long tail affects results. What if 1,000 people voted your site to #1 when searching ’4 star restaurant London’? Equally, what happens when gaming shysters bin your site? Google are saying it wont affect ‘normal’ results one bit, but you can already hear Google’s algorithms working overtime on extra servers with this 100% fresh, user generated (therefore true?) data.

Regardless, Google is getting to know you better (because you’re signed in). The big question is what will it create now it has that knowledge?

2. Voice activated search:

Only on the iPhone at present and it’s said to prefer a Californian accent, so be warned. All very Star Trek though, eh?

3. (and my favourite) Gmail video chat:

This coverage could really give Skype a run for its money.

Jason Calacanis shares a number of attributes, along with the initials, of Jeremy Clarkson. Both are tall, gregarious and outrageously outspoken in their quest for PR. (According to .net magazine, Calacanis called SEO ‘bullshit’ and a ‘wasted industry’ while speaking at a search engine conference, and said anyone from PayPerPost should kill themselves.)

But, unlike Clarkson, Calacanis is more than a one-dimensional critic: he’s a creator. This is the chap who started Silicon Alley Reporter and brought us Weblogs, Inc before selling up to AOL. His latest project is the human powered search engine, Mahalo.

Paid humans review the Wikipedia pages Mahalo includes (opposed to volunteers) and humans also scrutinise the Google results to reduce the risk of gaming. The two results are mashed up to provide what Calacanis reckons is the ultimate in search accuracy with a massive dose of trust thrown in.

It’s just out of beta having reached 100,000 search terms and attracted 4.6 million uniques in August – no alternative search engine has broken the 1 million barrier. But like so many ‘new’ web projects (think Twitter) they aren’t even trying to make money yet as Calacanis’ profile has secured the project five years of funding.

It’s about building a useful service that people want, but Calacanis is also very ambitious. He wants to create the next Wikipedia or Yahoo and carve a 10% market share out of search. It’s early days but keep an eye on this guy; he’s far more that just a mouth.