I'm getting some wonky vibes from the redesign of the private Facebook profile. The left-most column is fine with clearer navigational elements below the userpic, and the wall is just as ugly as ever. Targeted friend suggestions at the upper right don't bother me very much, and the targeted ads, though often offensively pinpointed (People in tech wear glasses!) are a part of this service.
It's the middle column that really kills me. Whatever happened to the promotion of the self-authored "About Me" phrase to give semi-friends a good impression? My phrase "I'm bringing spinster back" has been regrettably replaced wholesale by an ultra-shallow declaration of where I work, where I went to school, where I live, my birthday, etc, followed by five thumbnails of others' photos that I don't particularly want on the front page of my persona. I mean, those thumbnails aren't even recent! Most of them are from my college days, so what's the sorting algorithm: most viewed? Tagged with the most other people? Most embarrassing or insightful demographically, as determined by a mechanical turk?1
I wish I could honestly say that the old design was better, but the truth is that this evolution to presenting people as if they were livestock of different breeds, qualities, and geographic areas is a huge step back for social networks. Congratulations, Facebook! You have reduced the glory of a Real Name network to the greatest collection of tweet-length demographic profiles on the internet.
The anonymous profile shows a diet-sized portion of info about me, as I configured, but the new part is choosing an elite subset of your friends to formally declare as associations. Why is this necessary? I mean, in public profiles past, is this something that actually bodes weirdly for people? I feel pressured to declare my Top n cleanest and most neutral friends that are most closely like me for fear of Ayers-like accusations of being friends with some people. Facebook is pressuring me very directly to label some of my friends as preferred/positive connections, and I have a creepy feeling that it's for advertising purposes.
I'm what Advertisers call "off the grid" because, by choice, I don't have a cable TV package and 99% of advertising avenues are presented alongside my interactions are online. Similarly, I configure my online accounts to disclose as little information to advertisers as possible. And yet, this new Facebook feature makes me notably paranoid: there's a greater chance that Advertisers can make conclusions about my demographic information based on my Preferred Facebook Friends whose information is public. So no longer are we individual data points on the Facebook graph -- we become collectively implied personas open to media targeting.
Am I going to commit yet another Facebook suicide, as I did upon my college graduation day? Not just yet, but don't be offended when I untag myself from all of your photos, and when I choose you as a representative friend.
1 Spolier Alert: I have strong feelings on the subject of Kinect and their potential use for mechanical turks to demographically and not-so-anonymously profile their users. More on that another day.
Over 500 words on the Facebook redesign and not a single mention of the return to prominence of the Poke feature?!
Posted by: finn | December 05, 2010 at 10:24 PM
Why would I give attention to a feature designed for passive-aggressive crushes? It's the LOWEST rung on the online flirting ladder (http://www.thefrisky.com/post/246-he-said-she-said-a-guide-flirting-20/) for a reason.
Posted by: nataliepo | December 05, 2010 at 10:31 PM
If I'm not on all your left columns in the next week it's TOTAL WAR.
Posted by: jake | December 05, 2010 at 11:11 PM
Yeah, but this was always true. You said yourself that targeted ads are a part of the service; this data you now see in aggregate is how they target. That ship has sailed. I respect your desire to opt out though, because there's a serious risk for creepy behavior even if it results in ads that are more interesting to you.
Also, it's hard to imagine a time when an auto-generated page can capture a personality, but that's why interesting people write, curate, and share. These profiles are designed to be a starter course for someone you just became "friends" with. It's like me introducing you to a friend of mine and saying, "you both like photos of cute animals and play volleyball." Reading someone's blog is a much closer to actually becoming friends. Plenty of times, I've met someone IRL and felt like I already knew them. So yeah, they should probably bring the bio back to your profile.
Posted by: Matt Jacobs | December 06, 2010 at 01:22 AM
I find the top area of the profile to be the most obnoxious. I could care less about where my friends have gone to school much less be seeing information I already know again and again when I'm looking at profiles. It is also the most non-interesting content about people. Don't even get me started on the stupid floating buttons for message and especially poke, which Finn has already brought up. 2nd big annoyance is that they reduced the size of the left column, where my interesting content was to increase the right column of ads. But as Matty said, this is the business that Facebook is in. Undoubtedly in a few years people will move away to a new space where they can own their social graphs and their profiles.
Posted by: kimmi8 | December 09, 2010 at 09:08 PM
In regards to your footnote, did you see that Kraft foods is testing a scanner that guesses what you might want to purchase based on a scan of your face? Creepy and gross.http://www.fastcompany.com/1716684/whats-for-dinner-intel-and-kraft-can-help-with-that-video
Posted by: Angrywayne | January 16, 2011 at 11:23 AM