Zuckerberg Vision of Sharing Everything We Do Online a Terrible Plan?

  • Farhad Manjoo, writing for Slate, offers a compelling counterpoint to Facebook’s updated “share everything with everyone” philosophy.
  • The article suggests that Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for Facebook’s newly-designed profile feature (“it’s called Timeline, and it’s beautiful”) involves encouraging sites to develop social apps within Facebook, a grand vision that could dramatically change our digital lives. On the surface, this sounds like a fascinating idea, but there may be problems that evolve from too much sharing.
  • “If Facebook’s CEO has his way, everything you do online will be shared by default,” explains the Slate article. “You read, you watch, you listen, you buy — and everyone you know will hear all about it on Facebook.”
  • The article uses Spotify, Netflix and Hulu to illustrate Zuckerberg’s concept of “frictionless” sharing: “What he means is that I don’t have to bother with the ‘friction’ of choosing to tell you that I like something. On Facebook, now, merely experiencing something is enough to trigger sharing.”
  • Manjoo does not have privacy concerns or hesitation regarding Facebook’s financial gain based on his personal information. However, the author believes that the “nightmare” of “frictionless sharing” is more about Facebook killing taste. He believes that Zuckerberg is essentially lowering the bar by providing an all-access pass to things we don’t necessarily share with everything because they aren’t worth mentioning in the first place (read: boring).
  • While Manjoo enjoys sharing and discovering new media via Facebook and Twitter, he fears the day these services no longer serve as tools for navigating recommendations once they are bogged down in minutiae.
  • “That’s why I welcome any method that makes it easier for people to share stuff,” he writes. “If you like this article, you should Like this article. And even if you hate this article, you should Like this article (add a comment telling your friends why I’m a moron). But if you’re just reading this article — if you have no strong feelings about it either way, and if you suspect that your friends will consider it just another bit of noise in their already noisy world — please, do everyone a favor and don’t say anything about it all.”

6 Comments

  1. I agree — Facebook’s motivation to encourage mass sharing (instead of curated sharing) may blunt their opportunity to become the host of my conversations around content.

  2. I agree — Facebook’s motivation to encourage mass sharing (instead of curated sharing) may blunt their opportunity to become the host of my conversations around content.

  3. A great article — worth reading. This new view from Zuckerberg of sharing everything you do whether you “liked” it or not, is a BAD idea when taken to the extreme. We were moving in a great direction, making it ever-easier to share what we (truly) like with our friends, and checking-in, when done consciously, is great. The core idea of extending those API’s is good. But if Mark Z gets his way — we will soon be overwhelmed by a stream of “what I did’s” rather than “what I like’s”, and the revolution will have missed its mark.

  4. Perhaps the real issue now emphasized by these changes is that Facebook is not really a product. Z is not pruning to make a perfect product nor is this an surgically driven jump to a future state. Rather this seems a grab at information that points to the real product in his view. The path here is to get in front of search. This has nothing to do with the function of search or display of information it is really about more discrete and realtime information. Z has started battle with Google over the ad machine. The product is eyeballs and his bet is that knowing everything he can get will be more important to advertisers than knowing what you like as a consequence of search history.

  5. A great article — worth reading. This new view from Zuckerberg of sharing everything you do whether you “liked” it or not, is a BAD idea when taken to the extreme. We were moving in a great direction, making it ever-easier to share what we (truly) like with our friends, and checking-in, when done consciously, is great. The core idea of extending those API’s is good. But if Mark Z gets his way — we will soon be overwhelmed by a stream of “what I did’s” rather than “what I like’s”, and the revolution will have missed its mark.

  6. Perhaps the real issue now emphasized by these changes is that Facebook is not really a product. Z is not pruning to make a perfect product nor is this an surgically driven jump to a future state. Rather this seems a grab at information that points to the real product in his view. The path here is to get in front of search. This has nothing to do with the function of search or display of information it is really about more discrete and realtime information. Z has started battle with Google over the ad machine. The product is eyeballs and his bet is that knowing everything he can get will be more important to advertisers than knowing what you like as a consequence of search history.

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