Yesterday, Facebook announced a soon-to-come re-design of their social network interface, specifically intended to please both users and advertisers, a delicate balance that the company has become all too familiar with ever since going public less than a year ago.
Many have been quick to point out that the updates reflect a social network layout that is strikingly similar to the Google+ layout, with large images appearing in users’ news feed (from both people and pages they follow) designed to more effectively showcase content and draw in users and specialized sections that let users choose exactly what kind of content they want to see. Google+ actually made a dig at Facebook calling them out for being a copy cat. But let’s be real: nothing is original. The entire premise of Facebook is stolen from those hardcopy college Facebooks that had pictures and bios of people that you’d be attending college with. (I’ve never actually seen one of these in real life but I have heard legends of its existence.)
With that argument laid to rest, as Google+ sobs quietly in the corner, I thought I’d examine how Mark Zuckerberg can stay true to his word on making Facebook THE best personalized newspaper in the world. Let’s assume that Zuckerberg means both “news” that has some worldly impact, as well as “news” that really only informs and entertains you as an individual (because cat videos are important to you and so are pictures of your baby niece). And I am here to argue that Facebook cannot actually ever be this perfect hub of information. No social network can. They can try–and they should try–but they will never be the best. There can be no “best.”
Facebook, or any other social network for that matter, can never be the best because just like in our offline lives, not all of our relationship circles overlap. And we don’t really want them to overlap, for the same reason you wouldn’t invite your crazy uncle on your dad’s side to a happy hour with your co-workers.
Facebook’s new interface will attempt to address this desire for sectioning off your streams of information. Users will be able to click to stream in specific topics they are interested in, switching over to specialized feeds focused on just music, or on just posts from their favorite product pages or just posts from friends.
But to follow with the metaphor I just set up, this is a bit like sitting down to have a conversation with your uncle about music and then saying, “OK, let’s switch to current events.” You’re still limited. There are still other perspectives and conversations you are missing, people on other networks sharing content in different ways.
I personally divide and conquer my “news” contribution in the following way: Twitter is where I post snarky and/or inane updates about my day and general musings on life; Facebook is where I post links to articles with thoughtful commentary to appear intelligent; Tumblr is where I post gifs of Jennifer Lawrence. Many of us who have become attached to using different social networks can relate to this division of content based on the audience.
As social networks evolve, they are trying to be the place you go to find out what you need to know. Really, they want to be the conduit for sharing and virality. But just like there is almost no way of anticipating if a particular story, video, photo or meme will go “viral,” there is almost no way to anticipate where it would begin to go viral. This unpredictable nature of the Internet is fascinating and important, because it forces networks to compete with one another to be that “party” you decide to gossip with, or blab to or ask for advice from first. But at the end of the day, if you only get your news from one place, if you only ever hang out with that one group of friends, are you really getting all the news you need?
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The other day, I was flipping through my Tumblr feed when a friend of mine posted this video of a girl curling her hair (spoiler alert: she burns her hair off). I watched it of course and noticed it had about 100 views. By the following afternoon there were gif’s and parodies all over the Internet, it was blowing up my Twitter and Facebook and it had millions of views; it now has over 20 million views on YouTube.
Will Facebook’s redesign help to make it the “best personalized newspaper in the world?” Maybe, maybe not. But while you’re trying to decide, I’ll be checking out a video on my Tumblr feed that you’ll end up watching on your Facebook tomorrow morning after the entire world has seen it.