Before I start I’m going to state a few things. I’m going to say something that’s a bit out there, a bit controversial and a bit, at first glace, counter-intuitive. But never the less I am going to put the proposition forward.
Private profiles and turning Facebook into MySpace.
There, I said it. It seems crazy at first, after all the point of Facebook is that you are connecting with your existing real world connections and that it isn’t just an open directory of internet aliases.
But the fact is, this recurrent doom that people keep talking about has failed to materialise. They let Leeds Met onto Facebook, nothing really went wrong. They let the whole world onto Facebook, I’m not going to pretend I am pleased about that but it didn’t turn Facebook into MySpace. They added applications and yes they are very annoying, but you choose to list the people as friends that send you the application invites and you can say no. I do. It keeps my profile nice and clean, it’s still Facebook.
Private profiles however, I would argue are doing some damage. What I truely loved about Facebook was that each university had it’s own network and you could pretty much move freely around that network. You could see new people’s profiles, see what mutual friends you have in common, see the connections. Private profiles prevent you from doing this.
This hysteria about keeping your profile private is ruining the Facebook experience and turning Facebook into the jungle of uncommon ground and paranoia that is MySpace. It’s a slippery slope my friends, a slippery slope.
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This entry was posted on Sunday, December 2nd, 2007 at 3:18 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.