Let’s get real (or at least give it a try…)

Posted on by Lucy Sutphin

2008 consisted of sitting in front of my family desktop (in an impossibly uncomfortable chair), and logging onto my newest game, Facebook. In this realm, page likes were crucial indicators of “cool” and status updates were the only way my friends could constantly be notified, at any hour, of my angsty feelings and HILARIOUS encounters.

In the early days, Facebook was the first site that less us gamify our own lives. While we were accustomed to competing online to see who could make the best igloo for our penguins, on Facebook, we competed with our real friends to see who had more digital friends. More so, whose friends were more loyal to that little thumbs-up button.

Flash forward to 2018. Facebook is not just a game anymore. It is a streaming platform, news outlet, advertisers’ safe haven, battlefield, and, of course, source of endless baby photos. Some would even argue Facebook completely owns mobile communication.

This year Mark Zuckerburg announced on his Facebook status (which only got 285k likes BTW), that he plans to fix Facebook. His first fix was a series of changes to the News Feed to help create more meaningful social interactions by shifting the focus away from serving relevant content to users. However, this platform needs dramatic changes. Shifting back to a timeline-esque News Feed would reinstill a more natural feel to the platform. After all, time is linear, yet Facebook defies this by having us scroll from the present, to the past, and then to the future.

Additionally, changing “News Feeds” to a term such as, “Community Updates” could shift the way we view Facebook. Emphasizing that Facebook is a source of interacting within the online community we have crafted for ourselves encourages social interactions as close to real as the digital world will allow.

 

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