> mainstream people seem to think of Facebook as "the internet"
For quite a few years people used the Internet Explorer icon on pamphlets and posters as an icon representing The Internet. It seems people are now starting to use Facebook's icon for that.
When I was 13-15 "the internet" was IRC and nothing else. I still can't understand how I managed to spent countless hours doing just that (scripting and that "flooding" thing seemed to be great fun though)
The same goes for the other end of the spectrum, people over 50-60 who started using the intern.. ehm sorry, facebook to connect with their grandchildren and play games. Their whole browser experience ends there, they don't ever type a URL in and have no notion of bookmarks other than facebook's app bookmarks (and they get disillusioned when they're missing).
This was user testing with groups of young people in Tower Hamlets, London in 2010.
Aside from testing the UX spec we talked more widely around discovery and every group indicated that they began most tasks with a search on YouTube. Music, games, movies, homework research: all started visually on YT.
Facebook came up because the majority of these kids didn't have email addresses, instead doing all their email-like conversations on Facebook messaging and their IM on Blackberry BBM.
It is just a repetition of the "Use AOL Keyword "ID4" (for Independence Day).
Walled gardens for the less technical savvy have been the norm. Outside of the hacker/coder/geek culture, has it ever really been different? Prodigy -> AOL -> MySpace -> Facebook
I agree, over the years we've seen this type of thing again and again. I tried to explain to my mom once about the concept of a browser and that the IE icon on her desktop was not the Internet. After a while I gave up after realizing she was perfectly happy with her misconceptions about what the Internet is.
It's only a matter of time when something else will replace Facebook as "the Internet". These things work in cycles.
For quite a few years people used the Internet Explorer icon on pamphlets and posters as an icon representing The Internet. It seems people are now starting to use Facebook's icon for that.