Vint Cerf says Facebook’s closed model risks it becoming a ‘walled garden’ unconnected from other networks and websites
Google’s chief Internet evangelist Vint Cerf has warned that the "closed" architecture that Facebook uses puts the social networking site at risk of eventually failing to keep up users who want an open standard.
Speaking at an event organised by the Guardian, Cerf said that Facebook could become irrelevant like AOL or obsolete "like proprietary networking systems once invented by the likes of IBM", according to the Guardian.
Cerf said that AOL began in the 1980s as "a walled garden model" that "persisted for quite a while until the users of AOL forced it to be made accessible to the internet.
IBM was forced to adopt Internet technology for its computers because "users didn’t want to be locked in" to one brand of hardware, The Guardian quoted Cerf.
He added that "Facebook was becoming that way" as "a closed walled garden" and that its problem was that the "ability to connect to people inside the walled garden" would be overwhelmed by "a desire to interconnect" to other social networks or websites.
