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September 25, 2011
Facebook is changing yet again. It is the dominant social media in that it has a hold on the public’s online attention (800 million users). Facebook says that it helps people to “tell the story of their life” to their "friends"--- social media is one core of the internet. Facebook, according to its spin, has become an online destination where people can record their own history.
Facebook is the world's largest Internet social network, and it is increasingly challenging established online companies like Google Inc for consumers' time online and for advertising dollars. According to the company, people that use Facebook on mobile devices are twice as active on the service than users on PCs.
I'm only edging my way into Facebook, as I'm not sure how to effectively use it, given Facebook's form about privacy issues.
Gary Sauer-Thompson, Ballarat Railway Yards, 2011
The muted changes indicate that Facebook is seeking to more effectively monetise users' social interactions. It is increasing access to advertisers by providing even more information of value to advertisers wanting to understand consumers, how they interact and how those interactions have changed over time.
Social media is a core strand of the internet. If companies become increasingly reliant on Facebook to drive their sales, then Facebook is in a better position to demand that they should be compensated for providing them with a marketing platform. That means it is driven to track every move we make online.
I have noticed some minor modifications to Facebook already, such as the changes to the layout of its live fee --on the upper right of the page. It looks okay to me. But more changes are planned in a bid to transform this social network into a key entertainment hub, so that Facebook becomes the centre of our web experience--ie., friends will direct other friends to online content.
Facebook looks more and more like the future. Currently, it is where the attention, the traffic and the conversations are. Facebook will cement this by teaming up with companies that distribute music, movies, information and games in positioning itself to become the conduit where news and entertainment is found and consumed Its new partners include Netflix and Hulu for video, Spotify for music, The Washington Post and Yahoo for news, Ticketmaster for concert tickets and a host of food, travel and consumer brands.
Since Netflix and Spotify are not available in Australia, then the changes are not that significant to me re the online content. However, as Adrian Short points out with respect to the world of independent blogs:
Facebook and Twitter now wield enormous power over the web by giving their members ways to find and share information using tools that work in a social context. There’s no obvious way to replicate this power out on the open web of independent websites tied together loosely by links and search engine results.....You can turn your back on the social networks that matter in your field and be free and independent running your own site on your own domain. But increasingly that freedom is just the freedom to be ignored, the freedom to starve.
He says that we give more power to Big Web companies with every tweet and page we post to their networks while hoping to get a bit of traffic and attention back for ourselves. The open web of free and independent websites has never looked so weak.
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Facebook aims to be a lot more than a social network. Ultimately wants to be the premier platform on which people experience, organise and share digital entertainment.