Theres an increasing buzz (rabble rousing?) calling for facebook and others to tear down the walls (Wired, Scott Kveton, Mashable, etc). Netvibes has clearly fired a shot across facebook’s bow -Will facebook close access?  That will depend on which way the traffic goes.  Unfortunately  there isn’t a way for Netvibes to  pay facebook for the attention they gain.

Until the “attention economy” is enabled borrowing content isn’t viable. Attempting to retain an individual’s attention (”sticky” URL) by importing content from other sites without a fair exchange isn’t going to work.

Assume Netvibes is wildly successful; no one goes to the creators site; the creators go broke, that doesn’t work. This is the RSS feed argument again, but amplified since there don’t seem to qualms about taking content off one site and presenting on another (Yes it is with the user’s permission but is it within facebooks very liberal 3rd party agreement?)

I know the argument - facebook is making money off the members content; yes, but they created and maintain the exchange. Could they share revenue? Yes. Would enough people move somewhere else if they got a piece of it? Not if the site didn’t provide other services (like mining user information to find connections, tacking friends, etc.).

For better or worse advertising (attention) revenue is what enables the web (in general). Support content creators visit their sites! the alternative is embedded advertising (biased content).

Netvibes, let’s talk about how to pay content creators.