Aaron Beaton

Pushing The Envelope, Not The Share Button

Step 1: Facebook does something.

Step 2: Everybody freaks the fuck out.

It’s been just over 5 years since Facebook first unveiled the News Feed. The song remains the same.

This weekend’s Bitchmeme centered around Facebook’s new automatic or “frictionless” sharing. It already works with services like Spotify and Rdio and publications like The Washington Post and The Guardian. And it’s about to come to a lot more places.

Depending which article you read, this is either: a) the end of sharing b) the end of Facebook c) the future. As always, most critics are leaning towards the former, more cynical options.

Everyone should quit Facebook.

Again.

For real this time though.

LOL.

The reality is what it has always been. Facebook is pushing the envelope. Companies that push the envelope take a lot of shit. That doesn’t mean they’re always right — often times, they’re not. But it does show that they’re unafraid, unlike most companies out there.

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Step 2 annoys the hell out of me. It does help me purge my friends though, so if your ‘OMG how could Facebook do this???’ status or ‘Click here to revert your profile to the OLD Facebook!!!’ link pops up in my News Feed, chances are you’re a goner. If you don’t have the ability to think about something like this logically and realise that there is purpose and ambition behind such a change, I probably don’t care about anything you say.

I will admit that the most recent major change to the News Feed disrupted my feeds quite a bit. I was getting a lot more posts show up that I didn’t care about (particularly from pages that I Like), but again, it just encouraged some grooming and now I have a feed that I’m happy with.

I’m not on board with the new automatic sharing yet - I turned it off on Spotify for example - because I find that it results in a convoluted Profile and News Feed. My friends already know what music I listen to and if they are feeling particularly stalker-like they can look at my Last.fm profile. If I want to share a specific song or album, for now, I prefer to do it of my volition.

I really do like the way Facebook ‘pushes the envelope’ though. When an upcoming feature is announced, I always sign up to be an early adopter (not that it has ever counted for the record). I like exploring and tinkering with the new features and trying to understand why they made certain features the way they are - because I know they were made that way for a reason. Think of the testing, the data analysis and the usability studies that go into these changes - I find it fascinating. Many people though would obviously just rather complain, and get dragged, kicking and screaming into the future.

Source: parislemon