Has Facebook Gone Too Far?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/forrester/2011/09/22/facebook-changes-the-social-networking-game-again/
Once again, Facebook has made a number of serious changes to the program that has kept us connected with people around the world. Aside from changing the layout to mimic Google+, Facebook added new features such as sharing real time experiences such as watching videos and listening to music. Also the new Timeline feature gives a recap of everything that you have ever done on Facebook. From a marketing standpoint the new features allow more data about the people they are targeting their products at. This would also allow for companies to get feedback on their products by having their customers share their experience with the rest of the community. If we were to look at a communication graph between the general population and major companies we would see that there are not too many connections between members of the companies and the rest of the population. This allows for more connections between company members and the rest of society. Over time we may see a change in the graph connections so there are many more connections between the companies and the population. With companies more integrated with the population it would be easier for companies to get feedback and for the population to get jobs with connections.
As great as this sounds, there are still issues with all the changes that Facebook is making. As of recent, the numerous changes that Facebook makes is starting to make the program less user friendly which allows it to be vulnerable to competition. Furthermore, with Facebook having access to even more data about us, we begin to question when Facebook has gone too far and is infringing on our privacy. Is the extra data really going to help the people search algorithm that much more? Algorithm’s that use the Strong Triadic Closure principle such as Edgerank have limits and adding extra data to the algorithm has no significant benefit. Also, when using Facebook for a certain period of time we become “friends” with almost everyone that we know in our life. Will having an improved friend recommendation affect the majority of Facebook users? For the most part the “friends” that come up in the algorithms are people that we have met maybe once in our life because we go to the same school. Is this a true friend?
Facebook is changing and it whether its for the better or worse, it will continue to change without regarding our opinions. Only time will tell if we continue to use Facebook over time or if it crumbles like Myspace and another program will take over how we connect to each other. Just remember if you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer. You’re the product being sold.
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