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Thursday, March 7, 2013

Teh Internets Facebook Will Try to Stave Off Mortality Today

Posted by Paul Constant on Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 7:01 AM

TechCrunch gives us a look into what Facebook has planned for their press conference that starts in about three hours:

At a big press event on Thursday, Facebook plans to launch new ways to filter the news feed. These include a Photos feed of Facebook and Instagram photos, as well as a revamped Music feed of what friends are listening to, concerts, and new albums, according to multiple sources both within and close to Facebook. Larger images and image-based ads in the web and mobile feeds are coming too.

There were a rash of stories on the internet last week about how teenagers aren't on Facebook anymore. Most of the stories were based on anecdotal evidence involving a few teenagers the author knows, which makes me want to disavow them entirely. But the fact remains that Facebook feels older and more tired now than it did a year ago. There is space for a competitor to sweep in and do some damage to Facebook. Today's Facelift isn't going to change that.

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FB seems as if its changed into mainly product promotion - "friends" "liking" FAGE yogurt for a fucking coupon and such. tired is right.

Posted by Max Solomon on March 7, 2013 at 7:09 AM

I wish Diaspora had taken off, i'd love to see something more like P2P social networking. Then again, I don't want to have to regularly worry about the security of my own personal profile.

From others, of course, I already know that FB doesn't want my private information to stay private.

Posted by undead ayn rand on March 7, 2013 at 7:23 AM

That's Facebook putting the proverbial lipstick on the pig, or shining the turd.

Pretty soon Facebook will be full of hacked or zombie accounts (of people who actually died, but somehow keep liking stuff, or those that no longer log on), and astute reporters won't be focusing on FB, but on what is replacing FB.

Posted by ScandalMgr on March 7, 2013 at 8:06 AM

If Facebook were smart they would become the aggregator of all social media. It already is in some ways -- Instagram, Vine, Twitter etc all dump into it. Open the flood gates to let everyone dump their content sources and view them from one location, on one platform, with zero pushback. Monetize everything that way. It sounds like they may be warming up to this. If you're the White Pages of the Internet, leverage that.

Posted by Joe Szilagyi

on March 7, 2013 at 8:15 AM

Joe, that reasoning makes FAR too much sense. You'd get kicked out of business school, coming up with an idea that makes that much sense.

Posted by Pope Buck I on March 7, 2013 at 8:22 AM

Your mom is on Facebook! So, unless they figure out the privacy controls an average teen is unlikely to share too much. If I were Facebook i'd make the privacy controls a bit more obvious. It's currently pretty easy to share with the wrong group.

Posted by fletc3her on March 7, 2013 at 8:24 AM

Facebook is feeling old and tired? Time for me to sign up.

Posted by Chicago Fan on March 7, 2013 at 8:29 AM

I've noticed a drop off in original Friends content like family photos and also reposts or reports of those block letter irony phrases on photos or words of encouragement on rainbows and mountain streams, however, with the right subscriptions, you can make a pretty good public newsfeed from the big carriers. And there are a great man comments on some of those posts so I suspect it's becoming that...a sort of Drive Thru Suburban Web.

Posted by Supreme Ruler Of The Universe

on March 7, 2013 at 8:42 AM

I used to be able to figure out the privacy settings, so I know who is getting what and what I'm keeping from everyone else. Now, I can't. I have to go read a bunch of blogs to figure it out. I'm not a dummy. Facebook is just trying to monetize me, so they make it difficult for me (and people like me) to maintain some privacy. Their business model is based on me sharing everything, and since I can't figure out how not to do this (or rather, it changes every few months with an inevitable announcement about changes to "make privacy settings more transparent"), I hardly use it anymore.

Posted by Sterno on March 7, 2013 at 10:00 AM

Aren't there competitors already? MySpace is coming back. Google+ has been out for awhile. As mentioned above, Diaspora exists.

I would like to see a constructive post from you guys rather than the "Angry Hipster Yells at Cloud" blurbs.

What does Facebook need to do? Why does G+ fail? Is MySpace too Tom-centric? Have we entered a post-SocialMedia world ready to look back on the '00s with the same agog disdain for that future vision currently reserved for the "Kitchen of the Future"?

Posted by xizar on March 7, 2013 at 10:13 AM

Facebook ... why does that word sound familiar?

Isn't that something people used to use a few decades back? Before MySpace came out?

Posted by Will in Seattle

on March 7, 2013 at 10:34 AM

Why would kids want to enter something that's built for and by the generation preceding them? Of course they're not interested. They want to create their own space.

Posted by usagi on March 7, 2013 at 10:52 AM

It's just too hard to see what I want to see on Facebook, in the order I want to see it, and to keep private what I want to keep private. It doesn't have to be that way except that Mark Z won't have it any other way. Nobody's forcing him to fuck it all up. He's doing that to himself.

Posted by Prettybetsy on March 7, 2013 at 12:21 PM