There are a handful of web services that are pushing the envelope of online mores and social acceptability.
In this bucket we can dump Google Latitude, Foursquare, and Gowalla, and categorize them in the location-sharing department. Blippy, and now Swipely, are taking purchase-sharing to the extreme, so throw them in the bucket too. You could even toss Square and Venmo into the mix, as their alternative mobile payment systems aren't something the general population will race to embrace.
What it boils down to is that the majority of the population does not see the significance or utility of location sharing or going social with their credit cards. We've already explored in depth on Mashable why it matters, and what the future holds, but for the average person, telling the world where they are and what they're buying is still a scary concept.
While these services appeal to early adopters by pushing the envelope, ultimately that boundary pushing helps to normalize the behaviors, so that Facebook can step in and make once bleeding edge concepts acceptable, or even logical, to mainstream users. Edge services introduce new concepts to early adopters, Facebook makes them normal for everyone else. It's a pattern we've seen before.
Facebook is Familiar
When it comes to the web, users tend to gravitate towards the familiar. In search and e-mail sectors, Google is familiar, and Yahoo can be a comforting place for the everyday news seeker.
In the social media space, Facebook is like family. You may not always agree with your family, but at the end of the day, you trust them to have your back. On the other hand, for the average user, services like Foursquare, Swipely and Square are like a "friend of a friend." You don't really know her, so a face-to-face encounter might feel awkward and unnatural at first.
Fear of the Unknown
The psychological concept of the "other" highlights the basic human tendency to place what we experience into one of the two buckets -- things we know, and things we don't. It's a common device of modern fiction, and very much a part of the mystery created by the hit television show Lost in its first and second seasons. Viewers know that The Others are people whose mere existence is completely foreign and troubling to the identify to the survivors.
In applying this concept to the web, social media, and the average individual, Facebook is what we know, and the bleeding edge sites fall into the category of otherness.
What's especially interesting though, is that Facebook has the power to make the unknown known. For instance, Facebook's "Like" button is not scary. In fact, it's the exact opposite. For most users, it's like a door mat that reads "welcome home," and sends the message, "you know Facebook, you're safe here," regardless of whether or not that is actually the case.
Application developers and publishers recognize the power that Facebook familiarity carries, and proof can be seen in the fact that the new social plugins are now on more than 100,000 sites.
Facebook Normalizes the Extreme
With Swipely's private beta launch, the conversation around real-time social shopping is bound to become heavily discussed and debated.
On one side you have early-adopters eager to share their credit card purchases with the world in the hopes of being first to a new trend (some of them are already doing so on Blippy). On the opposite side, you have web users horrified by the notion of being so public with their sensitive information.
In the middle, there's Facebook and those welcoming "Like" buttons that are now plastered across the web. In much the same way that Blippy and Swipely create community around shared purchases, Facebook "Like" buttons give users the ability to share their favorite songs, movies, TV shows, sports teams, restaurants, and news items back with Facebook friends and integrate them into their profile.
You may not equate the behaviors as the same, and there are obvious differences, but essentially Facebook has normalized the practice of product-sharing in a way that users can and want to embrace. Behaviors of this variety, previously considered extreme, feel safe simply because of the Facebook brand name behind it.
Location-sharing and mobile payments can also feel extreme from unknown sources, but Facebook has the power to normalize these activities too. When Facebook launches its location features, they will play a major role in bringing checkins to mainstream users.
In terms of alternative payment options, Facebook will also help the general population feel safer with their offering -- Facebook Credits. Right now, Facebook's virtual currency can be used to buy gifts and virtual goods inside Facebook, but we see a future when users will be able to pay with Facebook for real goods, either purchased within Facebook's walls, on sites with Facebook integration, and potentially in the real-world via SMS in a fashion similar to what Venmo now supports.
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More Facebook resources from Mashable:
- HOW TO: Find Long Lost Friends on Facebook
- HOW TO: Add Facebook “Like” Buttons to Your WordPress Blog
- What Facebook’s Open Graph Means for Your Business
- HOW TO: Disable Facebook’s “Instant Personalization” [PRIVACY]