Facebook’s dirty secret: your profile page
Posted: May 8th, 2011 | Author: Sam Bueno de Mesquita | Filed under: Facebook, history, Media | 1 Comment »A couple of weeks ago, I was explaining Facebook to a non-user (they do still exist), and I did something I realised I haven’t done for over a year.
I looked at my own profile page.
It wasn’t a pretty sight. In fact, it made me look like a tedious, self-important, rambling fool.
Why is it that so many deeply private people, people like me, are happy to expose themselves on Facebook? And why is it that someone like me whose job involves a fair amount of work on social media for brands can let their personal page look so crappy?
Because part of the genius of Facebook is that you never have to see your own profile.
Social networks as social competitions
Facebook’s 2005-2008 incarnation, just like MySpace and Bebo, encouraged you to recruit new users by making profile pages a competition. There was a competitive gaming element where you tried to outdo your acquaintances with exciting photographs, your taste in films and music and, above all, the number of friends you had. Your profile was your landing page and, since interactions took place either there or on friends’ profile pages, you were always aware of how you were doing.
Image courtesy of http://www.352media.com/blog/
It was a social network that appealed, as Twitter and Foursquare do now, to the socially competitive. Your profile page was where you kept the score: your photos, your wall, your details, your friends.
The 2008 rebuild changed that and opened Facebook up to a huge new user-base: the shy, the introverted, the ordinary people who didn’t want to shout about how great their lives were. Since 2008, interactions have taken place through the newsfeed, with the effect that you never have a reason to land on your own profile page, and see how other users might perceive you. The creation of the ‘Like’ button took that a step further, allowing users to edit details about personal tastes in music, movies and brands, without even realising that they were changing their profile pages.
That freed Facebook from a lot of social awkwardness. It ceased to be about building your personal profile – it became all about your friends and what they were up to right now. Some people still ‘play’ Facebook in the same competitive spirit: I have friends who get a buzz from ‘Likes’ and comments. But even those people are never really aware that anyone else is watching how they do.
Facebook’s hidden data capture
One hugely beneficial result for Facebook – whether by accident or design – is that you no longer even notice which personal details you’ve fed into the social network.
The Daily Mash’s take on the last Facebook privacy scandal was:
We Don’t Have Facebook Accounts, Say People Who Care About Privacy
Millions of users who are quite happy to write down everything about themselves and then show it to people complained that their privacy was being compromised.
It was funny, but a little unfair. Facebook does everything it can to avoid showing you what you personally have put in. Its unique selling point, strangely for a social network, is the very strong impression that you are invisible. That’s how Mark Zuckerburg has persuaded all those shy, reserved, normal people – people who hated MySpace and all the garish showing off it entailed – to put their lives on the internet.
Have a look at your profile page today. It may surprise you…
