The big news social media wise this week are the changes to Facebook and the forthcoming even bigger changes. Taking the changes to the news feed first i can't say i'm that big a fan. I don't like Facebook deciding for me which of the personal news items in my feed is the "top story", surely that is for me to decide not a faceless multi-billion dollar corporation. Facebook's UI has also got rather clunky over time and the latest changes make this worse.
But Facebook hasn't cost me anything so why am i complaining? Thats an argument some people have presented, free service changes things so why moan? Well Facebook may be free in monetary terms but its not free in other areas of value : personal time, information, content. As a social network Facebook is very little without user generated content, generated by us of course. We've all spent a lot of time and effort in generating this content which attracts users to Facebook and hence eyeballs to adverts. Therefore i think its perfectly reasonable for us to complain when they change it!
As for the longer term changes, Facebook looks to be trying to become an entertainment hub. I can't say that interests me that much personally but it might work, it does sound rather Myspace-esque (and that worked well right?)
Reinventing the wheel is the new way to be hip.
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