How (not) to lose face on Facebook
Saman Ghani Khan
Karachi: In July 2007 Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sat down with the Time magazine to talk about the future of what is now nothing short of a social phenomenon. When asked about where he saw Facebook three to five years from now, Zuckerberg said that it was difficult to predict the future of his company, but he was certain that it would evolve in all aspects such as user base, advertising, applications and connecting people.
And evolve it has.
There were 30 million active users on Facebook at the time of the interview, and the number has now swelled to over 500 million active users, placing the Facebook community amongst the top five countries in the world in terms of population. However, its evolution is so much more complex than what meets the eye of the average beholder, and since it has so many dimensions I am only so bold as to comment on how it has changed for me and millions of other such users, albeit many remain unaware of this reality.
It is no longer a community of friends, family, work colleagues, students and various interest groups that share information about personal life, troubles, adventures, interests. Well, you get the picture. For many people it has become a 24/7 informed public commentary about anything and anyone from any part of the world.
Users are now held accountable for each word, idea or image they project onto their Facebook community and may experience a serious backlash as everyone seems to have simultaneously become a critic. Correction, self-righteous critic.
Recently a friend of mine posted a personal status pertaining to the extreme anger and frustration he felt about the deteriorating situation in Pakistan, so much so that he felt it should seize to exist. Big mistake.
As this information popped up on the ‘New Feed’ of his several hundred ‘friends’, comments reflecting outrage and vehement disagreement poured in. While some chose to interpret the statement in the manner in which it was intended, i.e. an expression of anger rather than intent with Facebook posing a means to vent, most others proceeded to read it as the author wishing that all Pakistanis be killed and the efforts as well as sacrifices of our founding generation be obliterated into thin air.
I use this example for two reasons. Firstly, people have to be very careful about what information they share on social networks not just to protect their privacy but, quite simply put, to prevent them from looking stupid or insensitive; or sometimes both. I am not entirely certain if this is a positive or negative phenomenon.
For those of you who think your privacy settings are ‘solid’, ask American Congressman Anthony Weiner about his privacy settings when he accidentally posted incriminating images of himself to his public twitter forum as opposed to sending out a private message, or the German teenager who forgot to mark her birthday invitation as ‘private event’ after which approximately 1,500 strangers showed up to her party (which she herself did not attend). My point being that human error is inevitable.
Secondly, fewer people are interested in whether their friends are ‘craving cupcakes’ or ‘experiencing road rage’. We now expect to keep updated about national and international issues or be told witty anecdotes that at least hold some entertainment value. I find myself thinking twice before sharing something on Twitter or Facebook, lest I ignite a furious debate that I may not be in the mood to deal with at the time. To add to the pressure of having to appear smart, socially aware and simultaneously a champion of justice as well as human rights, I recently received a private message from an old acquaintance complimenting me on how it was always a pleasure to read my ëpostsà as they held ‘substance’, as opposed to the mundane and ‘fluffy’ information that inundated his Facebook account. Little does he know that all this ‘substance’ was a fairly recent phenomenon for me since I became an aspiring journalist and felt the need to protect myself as an ‘informed’ individual. Now I definitely cannot write that “I am craving chocolate”. Oh well.
In the 2007 interview, Zuckerberg clarified that he envisioned Facebook as more of a social utility for people to share information, rather than exist as a community.
The content of this shared information is evolving before us. In a world that is increasingly shrinking due to globalisation as well as information technology, not to mention the fact that people now have an infinite supply of knowledge on their fingertips, social networking has caught on and Facebook users must come to terms with the reality that it is simply not what it used to be.
Source: The News
Date:7/4/2011
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