Saturday, October 11, 2014

Facebook has us all, and grossly under-performs


How much can our eyes see in a given moment? How many moments do we have in any given day? How many moments do we spend on reading and going through the FB updates? On how many such moments we feel 'amazing'?

From how many friends (I've got some 850 odd friends) do you see updates on any given day that you check FB? And so, how many friends you would surely like to check updates from? Who are these friends? Given the number of friends, how adept you've become socially as a result of social media?  Apart from friends, how many groups are you a part of on FB?

I spend a considerable time on FB almost everyday. And yet, on reflection I feel no great on most such days. I itch to get updates from some people and I don't quite know if they've posted anything. Why? Simple, everyone's posting a lot of stuff and that lot of stuff is algorithmically curated and the algorithm is no good. If I have 850 in my friends list, and everyone's posting 4 updates on average, there you go. On any given day I have a total of 3400 updates to go through! It's become a super-market of updates!

Is there a way out? A way that can make browsing the FB timeline marginally better and yet significantly effective?

There must be a cap of, let's say, 5 updates for every user. Don't let the algorithm curate. Let all the updates appear in a sequence on the timeline. Let the user figure which updates are worth posting.

Someone will argue, another platform will emerge that will offer 50 updates for every user. Sure, can emerge. Will that be any good? Will that help you read and go through the updates in any better way?

Capping the quantities is what makes something worthwhile. Otherwise the space is wide open. And you aren't even an atomic organism when placed against that space.