Facebook will replace all Internet search and independent news reading, as people finally realize they don’t care about anything their friends don’t already like.
I think this might be the year. Search engines are becoming overwhelmed by content farms and spamdexing. Add to this the growing distaste people have for uncomfortable ideas, and you get the Facebook universe.
I know that most Facebook complaints start with concerns over privacy. But leaving aside the service's own questionable approach to sharing users' personal data, I wonder if we should focus less on what information is shared and more on how it is applied. If your Facebook profile features a lot of pictures of you out partying with your friends, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that. Just like there's nothing wrong with reading and sharing news online. Just like there's nothing wrong with belonging to this or that political organization. Instead of asking whether or not people should want to share their perfectly acceptable activities with the internet, we should be asking why a creditor, or a school or an employer should make any of this their business. Okay so I went to Krewe du Vieux this weekend and people took pictures of me wearing a silly hat. Who cares?
The real problem I see with evolving social media is, as AL's blurb suggests, it facilitates a more closed circle model of communication where it's more difficult to stumble upon information and points of view that come from outside of one's accepted social or professional peer groups. I disagree strongly with much of what I read on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and for that matter on professional news sites on a daily basis. But I try to read and follow (or even "friend") as much as I can possibly hope to consume. I'm not sure that's the majority approach, however.
No comments:
Post a Comment