and of course Cory Doctorow in an Information Week article:
Columnist Cory Doctorow describes how Facebook and other social networks have built-in self-destructs: They make it easy for you to be found by the people you’re looking to avoid.
It may not happen today, it may not happen tomorrow, but inevitably Facebook will experience a great big sucking sound as everyone moves on to the next big thing, it happened to AOL, Tribes, Friendster, and even to Myspace. The point is yes develop strategies and tools for leveraging Facebook, but as the old saying goes “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”, and don’t stop scanning the horizon for new and interesting ways to connect and more importantly empower your customers.
I put my Facebook account on hold today because of this issue and wrote a post about it yesterday. I made the mistake of friending everyone who asked and now my requests column is twice the length of my page. I just had to put a stop to it. I almost deleted the account, thinking starting fresh would be easier.
It really doesn’t fit me. You have to find where your fit.
yes yes, great summary of the recent stumbles from a UX perspective.
Nice Post Karl!
One more thing to add is that Cory’s statement is exactly the flipside to building the “Personal Brand” that some folks like Rohit Bhargava have been supporting.
The Internet makes for a great distribution platform to build your “Personal Brand”, but it also mean: “They make it easy for you to be found by the people you’re looking to avoid.”
Just as brands struggle between maintaining corporate consistency and appearing human, we (regular people) are now having to choose and balance between using social media anonymously (or under pseudonym) for information and connecting with a small group of people or maintaining an open and growing relationship professionally throughout the web.