TNW Likes This: The Future of Facebook Project

7 years ago, Facebook didn’t exist. Now with over 600 million users and a valuation of over $70 billion, Facebook is one of the world’s most powerful and influential companies in the world. Just like Google indexed the open web, Facebook has indexed the social graph in an incredibly addictive and immersive way. The connective platform is an exploration of the way humans can communicate, and a constant reminder of how quickly the dimensions of our communicative abilities can expand.

So, what are the implications of a social media company growing at this rate? What are the opportunities for Facebook and its users to tap into its platform and the constantly growing social graph? Could Facebook become the world’s biggest bank? What is the biggest threat to Facebook? Or, will there ever be a day without Facebook?

Venessa Miemis, a futurist and media theorist along with long-time friend Alvis Brigis, a media strategist, writer and producer, hope to answer these questions and more.

I’m interested in Facebook for the bigger picture context of understanding what happens when 600+ million humans on the planet are connected on the same platform, and what that kind of communication infrastructure enables. Will we see new ways to relate to other cultures? New ways to have a collective voice in terms of governance and politics? New ways to do business and exchange value? The project is about Facebook, but it goes beyond Facebook. It’s asking questions about what we’re evolving towards as a globally connected society.

-Venessa Miemis

The two friends have set up a Kickstarter project, hoping to raise more than $5,000 to produce a 6 part video series featuring industry experts and crowd generated forecasts; it will be a series of interviews with the greatest minds of our time about the future of Facebook. Joining Miemis and Brigis on the project will be Shane Valcich, a filmmaker, photographer and web designer and Marko Posavec, an associate producer. The crew hopes to produce 5 topical focus videos, a large body of YouTube clips and an animation video of the future of Facebook. They will use the STEEP forecasting methodology, viewing the challenges and opportunities for this company through the lenses of Society, Technology, Environment, Economics, and Politics.

Interviews will include Kevin Kelly, author of What Technology Wants and the founding editor of Wired Magazine; Stowe Boyd, a futurist and social technologies blogger; David Armano, the SVP of Edelman Digital; Alex Howard, at 2.0 Correspondent for O’Reilly Media; David Kirkpatrick, the author of The Facebook Effect; Richard MacManus, the founder of ReadWriteWeb; Om Malik, the founder of Giga Omni Media; Douglas Rushkoff, the author of Program or Be Programmed; Doc Searls, the author, Cluetrain Manifesto; Sibley Verbeck the founder, The Electric Sheep Company; and yours truly.

Watch this impressive video for a sneak preview of the interviews they’ve conducted so far:

The project will be assembled by combining and analyzing available data, opinions from the experts, and the conventional wisdom of the crowds via a process they’ve called “Open Foresight.” All of the content will be made available via Creative Commons SA by-cc so that it can be reused, remixed, and built upon by others. To launch the public arm of the project, they’ve created a “The Future of Facebook” Quora topic page here.

Sounds like something you’d like to support? Check out their Kickstarter project page.