Like a horse with blinkers!

Are we really seeing everything that the World Wide Web has to offer?

The person responsible for inventing the World Wide Web, Mr Tim Berners-Lee has remarked that social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are in fact limiting the potential that the World Wide Web has to offer. He is not impressed by, in particular, Facebook and the impact it is having on the web.

He based the web on the principle of equality, stating that through the individual work of thousands of individuals, companies, groups and companies and also through working together the web has managed to evolve into a powerful tool which can provide us with so much information it is hard to believe!

The concern of Tim Berners-Lee is that, the most recent to take up position on the World Wide Web who are seen as being the most successful such as the likes of, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are in actual fact giving us a very narrow minded view of the World Wide Web and closing down the opportunities that therefore it has to offer us.

For example, Facebook when you join up you enter information such as your name, email address, relationship status, family members, what you like, what you dislike, hobbies, interests and places of work etc. You can add links to photos “tagging” other friends in the photos providing links to their pages of those on your friend list.

When you enter your data into the site it is captured and Facebook puts together all these bits of information that has been captured from yourself creating amazing databases where this information is then reused.

However the argument of Tim Berners-Lee is more so that Facebook and sites alike put up barriers and walls which segregate them from others, although your site page is on the web, your personal profile – all the data you provided is not.

Accessibility to a web page about a particular item such as the birthdays of those within a list you have created on the site can easily be brought up but actually taking that information to use on another site is not allowed. You cannot carry out this procedure.

When the World Wide Web was created based on the principle of equality, the idea was that information could flow freely, however through Facebook and Twitter and all similar sites stop this and this is what has annoyed the very creator of the World Wide Web.

So it is apparent that indeed we are limiting ourselves but furthermore Cable TV companies that sell internet connectivity are also limiting the flow of information. Companies like Virgin media, BT are actually limiting you to their entertainment services.

Tim Berners-Lee wants this to change and become equal just how he invented it to be like, therefore removing the barriers and letting information flow freely once more.