Nigel Whiteoak

I’ve just got back from a 3-week trip to Argentina, mostly getting away from the world of tech and enjoying the simple life.

One thing though that was hard to avoid was Facebook. Ryan Carson blogged last week to say exactly what I’d concluded based on my trip: Facebook is now the Internet.

I arrived in Buenos Aires and spent a few days walking around the city. The public parks in the city all have Facebook pages, and these are heavily promoted on the signs at the entrances:

Sign at Entrance to Plaza Vicente Lopez y Planes

Someone had even added a sticker to this sign, proclaiming that the guy after whom the park  had been named “liked” this place!

Sign from Plaza General San Martin, with “Like” Sticker

And why not? It’s far easier to set up a Facebook page than to create your own website. No technical skills are needed and it comes with built-in community features.

I left Buenos Aires for Bariloche and had booked into a hostel. They handed me a registration form and I started filling it in: name, passport number, country of origin, arrival date, departure date … Facebook! They didn’t ask for my email address, or a phone number. But they wanted to know by Facebook page (and be my friend?). I declined.

Amongst fellow travellers, it also became clear that Facebook has overtaken email as the defacto contact method. People would ask you for your ‘Facebook’ as a way to keep in touch. Again, it’s easy to see why: sharing photos is a snip, messaging feels both more personal and less geeky than email.

Lastly, lots of small businesses would tout their Facebook presence and encourage customers to befriend them, like this glacier-trip firm in Calafate:

Facebook pages, not web pages. Facebook messages not email. Should we be worried about one organisation taking over the most common functions of the internet?