Facebook’s Future: Organic or Processed?

Today, Facebook rolled out some pretty dramatic changes to the front pages of the users. The gradual shift from a welcome portal to a centralized news feed has taken place over the past several months. From the most part, it is hard for casual users of social networks to tell the functional differences between Facebook and Google Plus. Typically, these slight tweaks to the code have been primarily visual reorganization of data. Now, it seems the Facebook changes to the front page has fundamentally changed the way the users of Facebook communicate with one another. While these changes will be described in the post, the point to note is that the changes to Facebook’s user experience have been consistent with how the owner of social media properties look at their community and how those owners define their community.

1.) Directing away from “self-organized” groups to the “top-down” control of pages and likes:

During the early days of Facebook, one of the elements that drove the success of the service, in my opinion, was the ability of the user to create a group and control the membership of those groups. The strength was the Facebook essential gave users the ability to self-organize and therefore have better control of their overall experience. This strength was the one element of user manipulation that was present in a strict control system that was maintained by the owners of the site. For most sites to grow in the days after the “static web,” the creators of the websites needed to give the audience an experience that wouldn’t experience with another service. Social networking sites became a proxy for real-world interactions and engagement. People feel connected to others based on knowing the activities, likes, and experiences of others they choose to listen to. Despite the heavy control initially by Facebook and other social networks in the creation of individual accounts to join their services, the users could form organic communities of commonality based on their interactions and discover how others organized themselves. The issue now is that Facebook has essentially condensed the initial experience of an organic organization through the commercialization of personal information and filter information through a series of likes and recommendations. The points of flexibility have been “streamlined” to the core elements of communication. Commercially-viable feeds of information have replaced the organic organization.

2.) The reaction of social media sites to proactive social movements:

Because of this direction away from the organic, the one question that comes to mind is how does this impact the ability of non-profit groups and social movements to use Facebook and other like services as an organizational tool. Some in the media have called the event in Egypt and other Arabic states as the “Facebook Revolution.” I wonder if Facebook morphs into a hybrid Twitter, Google Plus, mySpace, Friendster, [fill-in-the-blank hot new social service] will it have the ability to be an instrument of easy organization and interaction. One of the reasons that point to Facebook aiding in the Pro-Democracy movement in the Middle East is the fact that Facebook reached a critical mass of individuals that were interested in changing the government and Facebook and other online services provided the infrastructure that allowed the protesters to organize and discuss critical issues. If Facebook becomes nothing more than a feed of trivia, commercials, spam, and Farmville notifications, will any other service have enough of a critical mass to fulfill the societal role of criticism and allow the community of the service to effectively act on that criticism or will all future service be avenues of commercials, trivia and slacktivism?

It is fair to point out at this point that this criticism could be nothing more than an attempt at a logically constructed rant to show my displeasure at the changes to Facebook. However, it would also be fair to note that the structure of social network changes. Do the changes represent a need from the community that the social media site serves or a want from the owners the site to turn the site into a “cool property?”