Today an announcement was made. A very intriguing announcement that will change the world of the Internet.
Facebook bought a small company called Parakey.
Facebook is one of the fastest growing websites in the social networking space and as a technologist and social networker, my view is that it has a winner already. My experience and those of my social networkers this year, when it opened it's doors outside it's Harvard University base, has been that Facebook is more viral, more addictive, more connected than other equivalent services. It has also made it's platform open for developers to write viral code on top of it and I personally created one in a few days (UKTheatre.TV)
So, when an announcement is made that it has bought a small company, I immediately visited to find out more only to realise that there is no product. The site is a holding page asking for your email. However, check the developers. They are none other than Firefox contributors Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt.
According to press reports, it's described as "a Web operating system that can do everything an OS can do."
This makes it a signficant threat to many existing services. Google, YouTube, Myspace and ultimately Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
Incredible and audacious.
I for one will be supporting this development and watching it's progress closely. I'll report here when I find out more. Feel free to comment with your updates and snippets if you want to be part of one of the webs major shifts. This is the stuff of movies. Web 2.0 ? We are talking Web 4.0.
