There’s a lot of conflicting information out there, boys and girls, about Apple TV.

It blows.
No wait, it’s tasty.
Hold on, it blows again. Big chunks.
This just in! It’s exposed the cable industry for the pile of a-holes they truly are.

I’m not sure what all the brouhaha is about, especially since the technology we’re talking about is the sort of thing we’ve already been seeing for a few years now.

First among tech guys like my uncle (who works for a huge telecommunications company that shall remain nameless), and then more prominently by the gaming industry. Internet-ing it up all over the place with their collaborative playing.

Apart from enabling your TV to act like a giant monitor, Apple TV will charge you $0.99 per show and $4.99 per movie. Otherwise known as a huge ripoff compared to the free 99 one might pay by visiting an illegal (!) streaming site.

I’m not afraid to admit that I use iTunes as a music player only, and that torrents handle the rest of my acoustic acquisitions. iTune downloads are for chumps. And Apple TV is iTunes for television. Plain and simple.

Apple doesn’t have deals with all the content producers yet. But they might eventually, which could cause prices to drop. But still, why would I pay for something that I could easily download for free?

Because I’m a law-abiding citizen, of course. And so are you.

Other than making the interface more accessible (a remote versus a plugged in laptop), this is not a revolution.

Cable companies have already gone through their “oh-crap” phase. And that happened because of the internet.

Sorry, Larry the cable guy. No news here.

Recently I’ve seen some things on Facebook that, at first, seemed like no big deal.

An app here? No biggs. A free sample there? Cha!

Sure they take advantage of the audience that Facebook has to offer. And by jove, they’re even useful. But they’re still very small elements of an entire brand identity that exists further beyond the website. Rare instances of tidbit-ery that are designed to lure people away from the Book of Face, and onto another dot com destination.

But when I started looking at all of these things as cumulative offerings from companies, it struck me just how much Facebook functions as a web browser in itself.

Not only do you check out your friends, but once you get organizations, companies, brands, and products into the mix, you can really do some amazing things from within the page you’re already on.

Buying your shoes in the online store, grabbing your movie tickets in advance, and getting answers on a customer support board are all sexy, sexy options to include on a Facebook page beyond the general “add your photo here” or “vote for your favourite flavour.”

I’m not suggesting that entire websites should be a copy/pasted to Facebook.

But the more you can get your audience to stay within the website, the less of an intrusion you are to their Facebooking. And the more likely they are to stay with you, instead of foregoing additional/external pages.

And the more opportunities you give this audience to interact with your brand, the more likely you are to appear on their live feed, and other people’s eyeballs.

(Editor’s note: I tried to be conservative in the number of times I used the word “Facebook” in this post. It did not work.)