Politics & the Internet

A few observations:
Obama works with a Facebook early stage employee:

• raises a shit load of cash by going for the long tail of contributors
• engages with Twitter, Facebook et al
  
• owns the Digg front page

Sarkozy works with Loic Le Meur.

So, what influence will the Internet have on the next UK election. Please tell me someone in the incumbent parties has been watching and knows that the hell they are doing (and this doesn't count).

Marc Andreessen on Facebook board

Saw on webware that Marc Andreessen has been asked (and has accepted) a place on Facebook's board.

I was pissed that I missed thechance to meet him when he was in our officesa few years ago as his blog is great and ning has been ultra bold in taking it's time and burning though a lot of cash to get tothe point it is an it's current value.

Fun to see what Ning (Open Social clan member) does with Facebook (already pretty well integrated actually) in the future?

Good move by Facebook. Marc, there always a place on our board for you.

Facebook definitely slow

Having poled a statistically significant group of 3 people in a pub last night it was agreed that Facebook is a lot slower and we are all suspicious that instant chat is killing speed. One of the 3 was a systems guy and his theory goes as follows:

- Systems will block Gmail (and every other mail client)
- Systems will block IM clients
- Facebook has both of the above
- Systems do not block Facebook
- That's because they use it themselves too much

Another attendee is working on the BBBC/ITV/C4 web VoD platform called Kangaroo. Sounds interesting but of course he couldn't talk about it on the record...

Facebook instant messenger

I played with Facebook IM for the first time yesterday and I was pretty impressed with the front end display and the way it has been incorporated into the UI of the existing site. A few issues though:

- it told me people were online who clearly were not
- new messages took an age to "load" (or so I was being told) so not very instant

I might actually use it once it works. It got me wondering though how much this will antagonise corp IT departments who block IM clients already. Will it cause FB to be blocked by more businesses or can the functionality be separated from the rest of the site? Is it any different to playing scrabble? Will anyone care.

I also tried to pull in some Yelp news from my profile there. Oh dear - started getting someone else's activity (and yes I checked the email address).

EDIT: and FB is getting very, very, very low just now. I had to stop using it for a while as it just ground to a halt.