Poll: Is Facebook Becoming The New Orkut/MySpace/Twitter?
Feb
Some recent changes that Facebook has announced make me want to share this quote by Osho on the importance of individuality:
You cannot be anybody other than who you are. If you try to be somebody other than who you are, you will never be somebody else, but you will miss being that which you were destined to become. It is almost as if a rose flower wants to become a lotus. His whole energy will be in how to become a lotus; he will forget all about the roses. All his energy will become misdirected. He will never become a lotus because he has no seeds, no potentiality to be a lotus. Only one thing is certain: now he will not become even a flowering bush of roses.
Like humans, if brands and entities try to become like someone else, they dilute their own being and end up pleasing no one. To me Facebook is heading in that direction. Here are my thoughts on why Facebook is killing the very reason it became such a hot social network:
- Assumptions about user behaviour
Zuckerberg announced at The Crunchies that the age of privacy is over (the video is here) and in that, he assumed he was speaking on behalf of Facebook’s 350 million user-base. The recent changes in privacy settings are difficult to wrap your head around. I know some not-so-tech-savvy people who have joined facebook, unaware of its public content policies. A quick search on Google shows their profiles, photos, wall posts, profile information – you name it. Are these users willingly making this information available? No. Will they immediately tighten the noose on their privacy settings when they find out the information that’s out there about them? Absolutely they will. I’d venture as far as to say they might even delete the accounts when they find out. Its the reason many people went off MySpace and Orkut - Facebook is best when its trying to be….Facebook!
There is significant speculation that Facebook is going the Twitter way. The last design change incorporated the live-stream. There is a move towards making content public. A week or so ago, the RT equivalent went live. I’m not against change that helps an experience get deeper – the RT (via) feature being an example. But one that dilutes that experience? Hmmm. Twitter and Facebook serve different needs. One is a micro-blogging platform, the other is a social networking platform. Sure they mix around, but their essence is different. On Facebook, 90% of my contacts are friends or family. On Twitter 90% are contacts I have never met. And that’s exactly how I want things to be. Turns out I’m not the only one.
What’s your standpoint? The poll awaits. If you have more to say on this issue, then I’d love to read your comments.
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In a way facebook got some of the things right by separating the URL/Page updates from status updates.Putting them all together was causing too much of spamming by the so called social media marketers. The privacy settings and other stuff which facebook has been changing is just to make facebook more search-able as they realize, that is where the money is. At any rate we don’t have an alternative for facebook, so we have to learn to live with its changes.
Welcome back Archie – always great to hear from you. I’m seriously wondering if an alternative is brewing somewhere already…? Remember when FB came along, we conveniently migrated from Orkut. So if users are unhappy, it won’t take them long to shift. Although the next round of social networks might just be much smaller, more contextual and niche. Lets wait and watch…