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Where Facebook got it wrong

Posted in Digital, Mel Varley, Latest reporters' blogs November 21st, 2007 by Melinda Varley

The beginning of social networks was Friend’s Reunited where people could keep in touch with classmates, not the world. Where did it all go wrong?

About six years ago I remember my father telling me about this new site he had found that enabled him to get in contact with people he used to go to school with. A few weeks later we were having various people over for dinner. Does Facebook have this same potential?

Friend’s Reunited was the real ‘phenomena’ as it was the first such site. It really did put people back in contact or at least give people the chance to snoop on their old school friends and see what they are up to. Unfortunately, it’s not as successful and is now to now dropping its subscription fee to entice users back to the site.

Facebook seems to have gone a slightly different way. First and foremost Facebook was about getting in contact with close friends and sharing photos and communicating as we would on Instant Messaging services. 

Now it seems users of Facebook are all in one big competition to see who can get the most friends. Today, I had a ‘friend detail’ request from a guy I never said more than two words to in high school. Why would he add me – because we happen to have some ‘mutual friends’?

Blake Chandlee, now Facebook’s commercial director, has said today (21.11.07) that Facebook aims to “help people manage their real world lives in a more efficient manner.’

Forgive me for saying, but I was doing just fine before Facebook took over my lunch hour. Facebook, while it says it sets out to ‘bring people together’ and ‘unite us’, seems to prevent us from doing just that.

I am certain that there are millions of users out there with hundreds of people on their friends’ list that they never actually talk to or meet up with, but just have listed as a friend to impress the friends they actually do see.

Where Friends Reunited got it right was how it brought people in contact from only a certain period of their lives. Most of us can’t keep up with our friends on Facebook, let alone have an interest in what they are now doing for a living or where they are going on holiday next month. Have our profile pages got so big that they aren’t actually a true reflection of ourselves anymore? And if not, what’s the point?!

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