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Web founder says Facebook is a threat to internet
By siliconindia
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Thursday, 25 November 2010, 14:06 IST
Bangalore: The man who founded the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, feels that social networking sites like Facebook and Linkedln represent a threat to the future of the web as they are moving the web away from its founding principles.
In an essay published in Scientific American magazine, he said the social networking sites are tightly controlling the information put on there by users which would mean that web is split into fragmented islands. Berners-Lee also opined that there is a chance Facebook could become so big that it could limit innovation.
Many social networking sites including Facebook are criticized for keeping users' networks of contacts 'walled' inside its own site. The web founder feels that such a 'closed silo of content' risked leaving the web fragmented.
Berners-Lee noted that the web evolved into a powerful, ubiquitous tool because it was built on egalitarian principles, which is now questioned by these sites.
Facebook has recently announced that its users would be able to download their personal information. Berners-Lee's statement has got more significance because it comes at a time when the search engine Google and Facebook are at a dispute over access to the user information.