Creating content has become extremely easy on the modern web. Whether it’s through a platform like Twitter, YouTube or Facebook, or through a self-hosted or created package. Either way, the creation of content is easy. And it needs to be. It’s one key to providing value with your site.

Any given site, in order to provide value, needs to either provide content or provide functionality. Often, the difference between these two can be blurred – while Gmail’s functionality is clearly impressive, it’s ultimately a method of providing content. The same goes for Facebook and other sites with a lot of functionality.

Thus, there is a lot of content flying around, from individual, small sites to massive, cutting-edge applications.

This is what the modern web has become – an egalitarian medium where anyone can add content quickly and easily. While the creation if good content itself can be hard and time consuming, the addition of that content is fast and easy.

This does create a lot of unnecessary and superfluous noise (check out some Twitter hahstags to see what I mean), ultimately, it’s a good thing as it gives everyone the chance to be heard. Not a guarantee, but a chance.

PS – I wrote this post in the same physical therapy session.

Basically, the article doesn’t say if it’s good or bad, but does describe how very, very developer-centric the company is. Essentially, developers are given ultimate freedom and are basically treated as though the are infallible (other than were they to do something malicious or were not performing, they would be let go).

There is little to no oversight or thought given about priorities at Facebook or what is a “good” idea.

As a developer, I would love to be given ultimate freedom to work on what I think is important or cool or beneficial. Though, while that may be a good thing goal, you can easily start to not see the forest for the trees. Facebook has repeatedly gotten itself in trouble this way, just Google “Facebook privacy concerns,” and you’ll have more than enough results from many different time periods and over many different issues.

This is where working too fast without planning or stopping to consider exactly the consequences before going ahead with new features can easily come back to bite you. While ultimate freedom and power is great, oversight is something that can never be overlooked or forgotten.

The number of times I’ve seen this pop up all over the place has nearly enticed me to go many times. They’re doubtlessly barely cutting into their profit margin by doing this, but instantly, they come up on Foursquare’s places near me and I know that they’re going to have that same deal. And who doesn’t want a deal?

Most of these times I had absolutely no idea I was near a Ben and Jerry’s, yet there it’s automatically advertised to me, reinforcing its brand and enticing me to come. And doubtlessly, one day they’ll be successful.

That is the future of marketing. Sure, no one can claim to know how it’s going to play out. I had previously mentioned that Facebook made the right choice by getting into geolocation services, but I believe there’s a larger opportunity there for them than any of their previous features.

Not only is it a potential cornucopia for businesses because now people will know that a business is nearby when they otherwise wouldn’t have known, but location-based advertising will become very real and very, very effective.

1. I immediately changed all of my passwords. FTP, login, database user passwords, hosting password, the works. Sure, it could have been any of these, but there’s no reason to immediately change all of them. Of course, you should also be updating them regularly, like any password you use.
2. Remove all files on/reformat your server. This should be ok, because it’s all source-controlled. Right? Right! You have no idea what additional files have been added or which files have been changed, so be heavy-handed.
3. Replace the files that you removed with all clean copies checked straight from whichever version control client you use.

All in all, it’s relatively simple, though stressful when it happens. I am not a full-on security expert, so full security and preventing an attack is another matter all to itself. My version is, by far, the simpler one, though highly effective in my case. After the initial issue, I have no experienced or seen another problem on the site (and I’m happier about that than I can really explain!).

What really happens with Foursquare, and will more than likely be the case, is that the people who check in are going to check in 5+ times a day are going to be 80% of the check-ins.

What Facebook has going for them is that other people are actually going to see those check-ins regardless of whether or not those other people are checking in as well.

While people are still very wary of check-in services (privacy, etc), I think that this broadcasting on someone’s Facebook newsfeed will quickly make people quickly adopt it. Either that, or it’s going to flop.

Facebook had a major win when they added pictures and applications, but there have been failures as well, like marketplace and gifts. In this case, I think either it’s going to be a major win or a total gimmick that people don’t use.

Regardless, Facebook definitely made the right move in adding geolocation services – with their already established, and more importantly, connected userbase, they have the biggest opportunity to make something out of it by far.

I wanted to elaborate on that and give some more information, so here it is…

Geolocation is clearly going to be a big development in web applications and software. And just like any new development, no one can really know if it’s going to be the “next big thing” or not. Similarly, no one knows exactly how to properly tap the next big development and ride that wave. People do it all the time, but there are plenty of people who miss the opportunity, or take the wrong approach.

Facebook is ensuring that they’re at least going to have a presence. There’s no guarantee of them being a dominant presence, or even a market leader. They are taking steps to make sure they’re there when something happens, however. And that is the best and smartest step they can take right now.

Old Spice created “The OId Spice Man” – a purely masculine character in every way: “what every woman wants and what every man wants to be.” Sure, it was mostly way over-the-top and ridiculous, but the caricature, which is what he really is – not a believable character in truth, was something very understandable nonetheless. Not that people could identify with him, but they could fully understand him and who he was.

Sure, they could have stopped there with a definitely funny and memorable ad campaign, but Old Spice stepped up it’s game on this one.

By starting to respond to individuals using YouTube, individuals who simply wrote about Old Spice, the ad campaign became pure brilliance. After creating this character, they can continue down the path of original and outrageous mini-commercials by following the overly-caricaturized model.

What made me realize the brilliance behind all of these commercials was how tailored they actually are. Specifically, the response to a Reddit user. Not only was the answer to chmowm’s question great in itself, it was as though it were addressed to the whole Reddit community because of the type of response it was, something Reddit users would find especially funny. And, by singling out the whole group, instantly there are more fans than there would have been. This is not to mention the picture shout-out to Reddit as well.

And that’s where the brilliance lies – this caricature is replying to individuals, but often those individuals are part of a group other people identify with, winning them over, too.

It got me thinking about what Foursquare talks about being and what people generally use it for.

From Foursquare itself, there isn’t much of an indication what it’s used for. Sure, there’s a learn more page about Foursquare, but really, despite giving the how, that doesn’t say why.

Yes, it does say that you can meet friends out at places, but sadly, there still aren’t many people who use the geolocation service, mostly because of the fact it is a geolocation service. Obviously, there are major privacy concerns and with recent events like Facebook’s recent privacy woes, a lot of people can get scared quiet easily.

Personally, the only time I’ve gotten a text from someone in my area, was when I was traveling up to Boston, and a friend noticed that I had checked into the bus station just before him. And even so, we couldn’t meet up at the time. It was so close to being a Foursquare meet up.

What Foursquare quickly becomes, more than anything, is a recommendation service. Whether that’s through people actually recommending places, or recommending them involuntarily by going there often. Which is why small businesses should do all they can to promote Foursquare. Whether it’s promotions, or just encouraging people to check in, the benefits from friends’ recommendations are straight-up tremendous

To get world news I usually turn to my favorite link aggregator: popurls.com. If I want to get the latest industry news, then I go to my Twitter account, where I’ve hand-picked developers and experts that I want to follow (with some friends thrown in there for good measure, of course!). If I want to get the latest news about what my friends, there’s clearly Facebook.

LinkedIn, on the other hand, is really about professional news in your network. If I want to keep in touch with a professional contact, or look up what someone is up to these days, that’s the first place I would go.

Just like you can’t out-Amazon Amazon or out-Walmart Walmart, you can’t out-Twitter Twitter. Facebook is having a similar problem, but at least they’re doing their own things as well.

LinkedIn should just realize who and what they are and what they are about and optimize everything they do around that. Who needs feature creep? No one.

Maybe it’s just my profession as a web developer, but really, there are a lot of interesting things in this world. And a lot of interesting people. Facebook’s big thing is sharing, and I think that that is a great thing in this world.

We’re all so busy all the time, so a lot of the time, people just aren’t going to ask you things, whether it’s what you think or ideas you have or how you feel. Sure, it’s unfortunate, but true. There are too many distractions to ask everyone all those questions. That’s why it’s your responsibility to put yourself out there if you want to be heard. You can’t let it come to you.

Maybe no one will listen, but getting it out alone is a relieving experience for anyone.