Occasionally, I bring my work hat to Freesia Lane. I am in marketing, where social media plays a large role in our day. This posted on Blue Shoe Strategy’s blog this morning. I know most of you are on Facebook. Thought you might find it relevant. Christine
An excellent piece by Jenna Wortham ran in the The New York Times today, Facebook’s Existential Crisis. She challenges the worth of the content of Facebook, its relevance to our lives, and marvels that the numbers are rising in usage while offering less worthy information. She mentions that others she talks to agree with her; Facebook has become boring. Unfortunately, she places the blame and responsibility for changing her sad state on Facebook. Typical.
Jenna Wortham appears quite young when I Google her in Google Images. And, like others in her generation, she places the blame for her Facebook life of quiet desperation on someone other than herself. Facebook isn’t the culprit in her lackluster Facebook life; she and her friends are. Facebook doesn’t provide content. Facebook presents the content you provide. The responsibility for the poor quality of what we have to read when we spend an average of 34 minutes a day on the page lies with those who are on on Facebook. Yep, it’s not the ‘parent’ at fault, but the Facebook participants not recognizing the power they have individually in the make up of their Facebook content. Facebook is not like watching a T.V. show where the fabulous Shonda Rimes has decided what we see and the messages it sends to our subliminal minds about who we are. Facebook is one of the few places we get to go to receive information where we decide what we see (who you follow, what pages you ‘like’), when we see it, and how much time we spend commenting or digging deeper into it. It’s the ultimate in free speech. It’s the ultimate newspaper self designed to provide information on that which you decide is important to you. And the way in which you yourself participate will determine the worth of what you – and those that follow you – get out of it.
Just as in life outside the computer screen, we are who we surround ourselves with. Facebook is the disseminator of our messages. So, Jenna, you and your friends need to take responsibility for your own boredom. Get rid of those and that which bore you on your Facebook feed. I have unfriended those that I know provide me with the downer of the day that might not lift me to my greatest heights. I work very hard to provide content on my feed that is relevant to my friends and family. And, I read a variety of pages that inform me, including those that annoy me. (Can I mention Fox News here?) I want to be informed and I take responsibility for that which goes through my brain in the precious time I spend on Facebook.
So, ask not what content Facebook is providing you, but rather, what content you are providing Facebook?