Facebook Takes Aim at Immortality Through Your Life
So watching the f8 last night was intriguing. For the first time ever, I actually liked seeing a Facebook revamp, which brings me to wonder if that’s a bad sign. For every time Facebook’s undergone a change it has met vocal resistance on how crappy it is before people invariably just end up using it anyway. It won’t be that way this time, except for the skeptics whose lives are built on being skeptical about everything new in tech. Most people are going to like this and that in fact makes me think it might actually backfire for Facebook. But this is just a wild statement born out of intuition and nothing more.
The point however that stood out for me is the lack of control of what I’m going to post on my wall or ‘Timeline’ once I start enabling apps.
Facebook is taking a shot at immortality here. What it’s trying to be is this digital self updating diary of sorts of your life and thus become a default option you can’t not have. It wants to keep track of everything you do, even stuff that you wouldn’t share otherwise. Forget the access t such data and the options that it enables for marketers, that all comes later, here right now, it is between me and this website that is going to be my best friend yet my stalker. How you look at it or in fact how most of the 800 million people look at it will define if this was a make or break moment for Facebook. Cliche yes, but very true. This might probably be the best time to leave Facebook or get more active with it.
On one hand if you’re gonna hang around on FB anyway, it is imperative that you use it to its full potential, it’s just better that way, your Timeline will look cooler, the bouts of nostalgia a lot better and it all comes out with some cutting edge technology that you’ve got to admire.
On the other hand, there are people like me (for the time being), who don’t like sharing too many details of their lives. I don’t want people to know what I’m watching every time, or reading every time. There are aspects that I want to share and I don’t and it isn’t drawn on the lines of broad activities (and therefore apps), it’s marked at a far granular level. And this has got nothing to do with whether it annoys my friends or not, so the ticker doesn’t really solve the problem, or rather it is solving the wrong problem. Now the thing is, if I don’t want Facebook to do these, would mean I don’t use a lot of the apps that’s there around and that would be built in the times to come, and that sort of defeats the whole purpose of this new Facebook. Why would I stay then?
What FB is banking on is the fact that Ben Parr put rather succinctly, we all hate Facebook but we still remain because everyone else is still there. Facebook knows that well. And it knows you won’t rush out of it soon, and seeing others over share you might start sharing a lot more, and once it becomes this bank of stories from your life, it will remain eternal in 800 million social circles. It is going to make it imperative that you begin documenting your life, even stuff that you don’t want to otherwise. And at first look I am not liking it.
