Facebook Thoughts
This started out as my thoughts on the “awesome” Facebook announcement that took place today, but it turned into my musings on Facebook in general.
I don’t know how I feel about today’s Facebook announcement. In case you haven’t heard, Facebook is giving its chat system a virtual facelift. They are integrating group text chat and one-on-one video chat. The video chat is powered by a Facebook-Skype partnership. This of course comes days after Google+, Google’s social network, becomes available. Google+ is currently in BETA and is available by invite only. This is an obvious move by Facebook to compete with Google´s GMail video chat. From what I understand, you have to be logged into and on Facebook to utilize the new features. The same goes for GChat, but if you use GChat, Gmail is most likely your primary email client and you´re probably logged into Gmail all the time anyway. With it´s new messaging system, Facebook is trying to compete with Gmail directly, but I don’t think people are going to move their email to Facebook.
For some time now I feel like companies, such as Facebook and Google, have been getting too big. Google is a little ahead of it’s time with it’s push for cloud computing. I think maybe 10 years down the road, yes, everything will be in “the cloud,” but currently it just isn’t feasible. But that is another post in itself. As for Facebook, they have been getting a little overbearing for years. When I signed up for Facebook in 2006, I did it because it was only for university students and it was a good way to connect with people at school. Then they gradually opened Facebook to anybody. I was skeptical at first, but I do like using Facebook to keep in touch with friends who are not in my UNC network. Then they changed the user interface and allowed people to make “pages.” This was in obvious competition with MySpace, which Facebook completely dominated. Facebook has become so popular that I think if you’re a musician or in a band, it is essential you have a Facebook page. I was the one who initiated and created the Braddigan, Taylor Carson, and Todd Martin Facebook pages. (3 pages you should check out! Shameless plug :)) And for that reason, Facebook is good. It is a fantastic way to promote different things.
I guess my problem with Facebook is in how people use it. People tend to put their lives on Facebook. Twitter is somewhat in that boat as well. But Facebook allows you to add photos, videos, pretty much anything you want. And people take advantage of all the features it has to offer. You can know more than you would ever want to know about a person by looking at his/her Facebook page. I find that I don’t care about 99% of the status updates my “friends” put on Facebook. That is why I stopped using Twitter, I didn’t care about what people were posting. I put friends in quotes above because I no longer know, or have fell out of touch with, the majority of people I’m friends with on Facebook. If you were on Facebook, I feel like being a friend in real life was cemented by being friends on Facebook (at least it use to be), like in this clip from the South Park episode on Facebook. I think Eric Hutchenson did a great job with this song explaining what I’m trying to say.
I just hope we don’t lose our in-person, face-to-face interactions. Time is the most important thing you can give a person and in-person time is the best kind of time. You don’t want to lose having a good conversation with someone because you know everything about them from their Facebook page.
Wow, this got a lot longer than I originally intended. If you actually read this, you’re a true friend, in the real world! Thank you and here is a “surprise!”
