So it's yet another case of Facebook being late to the party. The extra it adds is enabling you to select how much of someone's stream you want to subscribe to - giving a little control to the follower (though frankly this has varying value depending on your personal experience of the volume of content - which has always been controlled by who and what you friend or follow in any event).
But it got me thinking: Subscribe takes us back to our online social roots: You just have to love blogs and blogrolls, RSS and hypertext linking. A glorious place of freely forming communities of purpose.
All the rest; Facebook, Twitter, Google +, etc etc, all the rest are at best filters of simplicity or, at their worst, silos of data. Some sit further along to the left of that scale, some to the right. But sit on it they do, in a way that blogs and rss well, don't.
The social platforms have taken down some serious technical barriers to entry - itself a silo of some significance. My wife would never have written a blog. But she's at home and connected with facebook. This is a good thing.
But ultimately we will call time on the nannying. The tech difficulties the platforms solve for us will become problems no longer. A level of what we now call technical know-how will simply become common sense. Like being able to cross a road, most folk will grow up knowing how. They'll call it common sense rather than know-how because it will, of course, be common.
At that point we no longer need the platforms. We'll need and will have the common sense to publish, to discover those who share our needs, problems or desires. And the ability to connect in self-forming groups.
And guess what Facebook et al? We won't be doing this to be marketed to.
that the shift to the next paradigm will be massive can be seen from this post ... to create platforms that would not use the users for the benefit of the platform requires a completely different value system of what it means to be a human being and how they function in community.
ReplyDeleteit's coming. slowly. :-)
just found this to illustrate the shift to the next paradigm .. it's from business, not social media businesses however
ReplyDeletehttp://www.outsideonline.com/blog/outdoor-adventure/climbing/patagonia-ebay-sign-the-pledge-then-sell-your-old-stand-up-shorts.html
patagonia saying don't by our stuff unless you need it .. fabulous
Facebook isn't late to the party, it is the party. Google+ might be doing the innovation but Facebook has the numbers and it's much easier to copy innovation than to pull converts.
ReplyDeleteI would suggest that we are more likely to see Facebook integration into every aspects of our lives than G+ or even Twitter. Facebook's latest partnerships and latest functionality is exceptionally clever. I don't like it but I suspect it's an age thing on my part. Young people (especially under 20's) seem to think it's great and I have to say that my observations of how kids use Facebook indicates that they use it quite differently to how their parents use it. They already use it in terms of communities unlike their parents who use it within silos of friends and family.
I agree that no one does anything with the thought of being marketed to and when asked the question point blank most people would agree that they do not want to be marketed to. But I think that the question itself is somewhat old-school. I doubt that young people think in those terms. They've come to accept, subconsciously perhaps, that marketing is the price you pay for free stuff and that's fine with them.
I'm not sure about your point regarding no longer needing platforms or the connection between that idea and "common sense to publish, to discover those who share our needs, problems or desires. And the ability to connect in self-forming groups." I would have thought that publishing, connecting and sharing is happening right now within the platforms provided to us. If you are implying that we cannot function as communities within such platforms as they are presented to us now then I have to say that my experience is to the contrary. There are some very rich communities already existing—communities that could never have existed prior to having such platforms as Facebook—and I don't see too many of them giving any thought to the marketing side of things.
As a disclaimer: I have a Facebook account but rarely use it (never post). I have a G+ account also which I prefer but only because of its growing popularity among photographers. My favourite platform however is Twitter but ironically that is the one platform that I find requires the most work in terms of getting quality information out of or creating a true sense of community.
The key point, I believe, is that Facebook has no new model. It applies mass media broadcast value propositions to a network of self forming groups.
ReplyDelete