The recent outcry about feeds being added to Facebook is pretty interesting.
I find it strange that so many Facebook users are okay with the social networking that Facebook affords them, but the syndication of their profiles somehow crosses an uncomfortable line. As far as I can tell, Facebook only populates your News Feeds with items from people within your social network. On each profile page, you can access a “mini-feed” but there’s nothing contained in it that isn’t part of the profile itself. There is no RSS-out (as far as I can tell); the “feeds” are just an additionanl communication channel for the existing networks.
I suspect that there’s something about seeing the “news” of their changing profile in serialized form that makes people uncomfortable. Casual monitoring of someone’s entire profile to see what’s new and what’s changed seems okay; constant monitoring of itemized changes to the profile seems gossipy–and even creepy.
Ultimately, from a content perspective, the difference is purely perceptual.
On a related note, I feel like I’ve been involved in other conversations lately with people who can understand the value of, say, a blog, but are uncomfortable with any actual exposure. They want to know how they can blog without anyone seeing what they’re doing. Facebook users want to figure out how they can participate in a social network without actual confronting the fact that by doing so they are exposing themselves, with or without feeds.
Exposure is uncomfortable, and any exposure we make of ourselves should be done so with full understanding of what we’re exposing and why (I’m not sure every Facebook user is very thoughtful about this point). But, when used appropriately, it’s this willingness to expose our lives, our work, and ourselves that powers social networking.
Martha,
Funny you should menion this, for I recently was reading Middlesell.com and they are currently featuring a video taken at UMW in which various students were interviewed about these very changes to Facebook. I was not sure of the details so your clarification here further supports my theory that what this new feed does is not generally understood by those interviewed all that well. Lucky for me that I have the frishwrapper to help me wrap my head around what seems like a non-issue. 🙂
Interesting to see the way that social networking can erase the isolation that can (not must, but can) characterize industrial society. But look at the opportunities here, and often missed, to put these Facebook changes into the larger context of thinking seriously about what we give up in our lives, and what we gain, by the choices we make.
Along those lines, I think this post should be anthologized. 🙂
Interesting, too, that the Middlesell.com fellow presented at Student Academy last year. He’s obviously widening his range. Good for him.