We live in a brave new world. For the past 5 years or so we’ve been given MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and a host of other services that allow us to share our lives, make friends and reconnect. If you count blogging, you can go much further back than that. There have been at least two constants over this period of time: 1) The services have grown, evolved and changed and 2) People have complained and worried all along the way.
Last week Facebook implemented many of the changes that have been rumored and tested over the last few months. They also mentioned new features at their f8 Conference that are coming very soon like Timeline and Open Graph. When the first set of changes were implemented there was lots of complaining and whining on Facebook. “Change it back!” “I think I’ll just quit.” “I wish Facebook would stop changing things.” We’ve seen this every time Facebook makes a major change or update. Every time though, people got used to it and moved on. The service continued to grow and all was well. Is that about to change?
Back to Timeline and Open Graph. Here is what they are in the most basic terms I can muster:
Timeline – This will turn your own profile/wall into a digital scrapbook and give you and your friends access to everything you have done on Facebook. It will also allow you to add pictures and life events that happened before Facebook. For example, I added my wedding date which was way back in 1996, before I was even blogging.
Open Graph – This is a protocol that will allow 3rd party services to report your activity back to your Facebook account. As an example, when I listen to a song on Spotify, or favorite a show on Hulu, it puts a notice of the activity on my wall.
I already have both of these features enable on my Facebook and personally like them. None of the activity that is getting reported or any of the thousands of updates I have made on Facebook contain any info that I am not willing to let those I have friended see. I have chosen to be on the service. I have chosen who to friend and not friend. And I can control even further who sees what with lists. So it’s not a big deal to me. But that isn’t true for everyone.
Tech pundits and Facebook haters everywhere are trying to stir people up and scare them. Once these features go live, all those Facebook Luddites that complained last week will lose their collective minds. These are big changes after all. They will make the changed of last week very small in comparison. Here is the great thing about it all however. Since the service is free there are basically two ways to handle this and they are quite simple:
You can embrace these changes, make them work for you, and enjoy them.
or
You can quit the service altogether and move on.
It really is that easy. Look, technology is not a static endeavor. It will change and evolve. It has to. We think we want things to never change but really, do we wish the internet still looked like this: CNN August 15th 2000 Of course we don’t. Change means we have to change and learn, but come on, isn’t that a good thing?
So, will people make it through this next round of improvements? Or will they see them as not being improvements at all and finally leave the service for another? I doubt it. Myspace is over. Twitter is not a good replacement. Google+ could be an alternative but are not in a position right now. The fact is, almost everyone we’ve ever known is on Facebook. As long as that is the case people will stick around. So since you are sticking around anyway, leverage these changed for your good.
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