Since I’ve been in social media for about 5 years I’m qualified as an EXPERT to tell all of you how you should feel about Facebook. That’s right. Listen to my knowledge!
Ok I’m no expert and I usually stay out of the fray about Facebook whenever they release new changes. This card from my favorite site of all time sums up my opinion pretty well:
Up until recently, the vast majority of the changes made by Facebook made sense to me. Granted, some of the privacy stuff was wonky and convoluted but I understood the general direction of where they were headed. The goal was to make connecting and sharing with your network much easier.
This is the key to where they’re falling down this time: your network. I now see that the moves of the past were towards a broader goal that’s now clear as day to me. Facebook is no longer interested in being a social network where you connect with your friends and family. Facebook wants to be a portal. That sounds very 90s of me, i know, but I can’t find a better word to describe what these changes mean. I now look at my feed and I see a random entry as the “Top headline”. It can stay there for 2 hours or 2 minutes and it just depends but rarely do I give 2 craps about seeing it. On the right I see EVERYTHING that my friends are doing, regardless of whether I know the people their interacting with. And the addition of Timeline, and the cracking open of that API, we’re going to start seeing all of the things I’m doing, saying, and reading elsewhere on the web fed into my facebook profile. They’re wanting to make Facebook THE place to go for all information. News. Deals. Pictures. Comments. Whatever it is, they want you on Facebook to find it. So this is why I call it a portal. Or maybe there’s a better name for it: Google killer. And I’m not talking about Google+. I’m talking about THE Google.
Anyways, while a lot of these changes are pretty nifty on the face of things, it takes away from what I think the core objective of a social network should be: to connect with my friends. My family. My coworkers. But the connecting with the rest of the world? Not interested.
#1 written by Pop October 11th, 2011 at 18:33
I am impressed that you are unimpressed! What happened to my comments about the previous article? have a great day. love pop