I admit it, I’m not as huge a fan of Facebook as many of my colleagues and goodness knows many around the globe. They are in continual change, never really out of beta testing, they just don’t call it that. The latest was kind of an “oh not this again moment,” for me when it came out. But since I first got nudged by my trusted webmaster, I took a look sooner rather than later and I jumped in.
I checked out Michael Port’s transformed profile first to see what a difference it really made and here’s why it works and why you want to jump aboard to:
#1 Connecting is easier and more interesting when you can see something meaningful about a person in a first glance. This enables those critical POINTS OF CONNECTION like your education, who you work for, your title, where you live, where you are from, and everyone’s favorite, your relationship status to be caught in a quick glimpse. There is no need to dive deep into tabs or take time (scarce always) to really investigate.
#2 We are A VISUAL WORLD. It is all in the face. I took a bit of time to tinker with the photos that showed up getting one’s that I felt truly represented me. This forced me to go into my Facebook photos and do some clean up. Previously I’d been lazy (bet you have too) and just left what was tagged and what I’d put up. Sometimes you can miss tagged photos and they aren’t always flattering or what you want to have shown. This was a valuable chance to rectify that. This change allows you a literal snapshot of someone’s life, work, and play sides. Some complain it is busy, I like it as I am less inclined to take the time to do deep investigation and prefer to capture essence in a cursory glance.
#3 This is likely to CREATE GREATER INTERACTION with your existing friends, since each time you go in a new slate of faces greets you. Now, I’ve no doubt that I can change that and keep a specific bunch of friends in view at all times, but really do you want to limit yourself like that. Most of us have “friends” we don’t know and this is a great opportunity to find out more and decide to keep them in our inner Facebook circle or let them out. (Yes, you do have a choice, you can say no; you can also unfriend without worry.) Facebook is smart, they know that the more interaction they generate, the more time you will spend on the site and become “dependent” on it.
#4 Since at least for now, there is no longer an obvious way to update status from your profile, this forces you to HEAD TO YOUR HOME PAGE. I’ve always done my updates both on my profile and through the home page, but betting many don’t. By sending you over to the home page, they are again engendering more interaction as you will be likely to get a bit more lost in friends updates, friends you may not ordinarily pay attention to or keep up with.
#5 Now, it is likely that this change was also done to enable advertisers better access to our information. If you don’t like it, then don’t facebook; it’s that simple. Why else would they add categories to out interests and create opportunities for us to feature at least one in each category of interests as our favorite? Get over it. We are in THE AGE OF BIG BROTHER whether you want to admit it or not. You can live with it and take advantage of it or you can spend your time complaining and freaked out. The choice is yours!
So I invite you to head on over to Facebook and comment on my profile changes. If you haven’t been there before, send me a friend invite, make sure it is a personal as I don’t accept anonymous requests and am about to close my profile to all but those I consider real friends who are people not just drive-bys! I also welcome your thoughts and comments here.
