Is Facebook Making a Run at Changing the Presence Paradigm in UC

In Unified Communications presence is a big concept and a battleground for the convergence play. Over at GigaOm Om writes about his views on Facebook Connect.

This line is very telling from Om’s story:

Each service adds a few more data points about you inside the Facebook brain, which is quite aware of your activities inside the Facebook ecosystem. The brain can then crunch all that information and build a fairly accurate image of who you are, what you like and what might interest you. With all that information at its disposal, Facebook can build a fairly large cash register.

In my view Facebook is land grabing the presence component of what is looking to be a paradigm shift that will disrupt the emerging Unified Communciations sector (covered here at BroadDev.com).

Other Web 2.0 services like Twitter et al have a unique presence component. Not in the classic UC sense but in a new way. Users like this Facebook model. Silo’d platforms might not make it going forward.

Facebook if successful will force a defacto standard by thei dominate position at the user level (90 million and growing).

Could presence be ripped away from the Unified Communications platform or converged into an environment like Facebook? To me user value will win and if users prefer environments like Facebook where information and applications come to them then that might just force some massive change across the board.

Vertical silos might be demolished by open horizontal networks. Interesting development if that happens.