Facebook Notes: More Big Changes Ahead
Well, as you may have heard today, yesterday’s major Facebook changes are nothing compared to what’s coming down the pike in a few weeks. I’m too wiped to recap it now, but I watched the whole hour+ f8 video with Mark Zuckerberg’s big announcement, and WOW. I live-blogged my notes on it as I listened in a series of public Facebook posts. If you don’t have FB but your kids do, you’ll want to know about the new developments. Lots of privacy issues to be aware of!
The Zuckerberg video, explaining the new evolution of the Facebook profile: the Timeline.
My notes:
• He says FB sees your profile page as “what you’d show someone in the first conversation you have with them.” Well, that’s a key difference in understanding right there, isn’t it? I’ve never seen my FB profile that way—profile in this context means your wall, your info page, your photos. My understanding of a Facebook wall, and I think I’m not alone in this, is where you share things for people you know, people you’ve allowed access into a more personal side of your life. When I meet a stranger, I don’t immediately launch into a personal narrative or pull out my wedding album…
• Zuckerberg on the original FB profile (one photo, basic info, school, work, relationship): “People loved this product…It was the first place that most people had on the internet where you felt safe expressing your real self.”
• Timeline is an interesting concept—it does address the problem of old status updates disappearing into the ether—but he keeps emphasizing how for previous years/months, Timeline pulls only “the most important events” of your life. So…it’s another case of FB determining what “important” means—just as they’ve been determining which friends appear more often in our news feeds.
The rest of my notes are in this long (public) thread on Facebook. It’s way too long to copy here. 🙂
Phoebe says:
I finally deleted my Facebook account earlier today right before all this came out – and I had no knowledge of it beforehand. I had clung to it for a few friends and a few groups, and I have forsaken them for Google+.
You know of my angst and woe and general roiling in the outer darkness issues with social media in general and Facebook in particular – and you know I’m going to say….
IT’S THE FEED!
On September 22, 2011 at 9:29 pm
Amy Caroline says:
I deleted my Facebook yesterday and am working on getting my kids to delete theirs too. Hubby is still on (to keep an eye on the kids, lol). I just did NOT like how it didn;t matter what my settings were, but what other’s had their settings as.
I also noticed that all of a sudden, people I hid were popping back on my screen. If someone I was friend’s with commented on a person I hid’s post, boom they were back.
It is one of those awkward things, you know, where yu knew the person in high school but they are a potty mouth, so you hid them. Then those swear words are back on my wall where the kids could see them.
It was just getting to weird ans creepy for me.
On September 23, 2011 at 12:49 pm