I admit it, I am suffering from Facebook Fatigue. Something about the site has become overwhelming to me. Is it that every time I login, I am hit with an array of news that I could not care less about? (June listened to a song by Sean Paul! Gloria scored 50000 points for Ellysa's Trivia Team! (I still don't know how I started a TV Trivia Team that I have never participated in) Alex is playing Hot Potato! Would you like to join him?)
My FB Fatigue is so great that I could not even bring myself to create one of the new FB Pages. Or become a fan of one of the several Penn State Libraries pages already created. Why am I feeling this way? Are some of our students feeling the same thing? I did not start feeling this way until Facebook Ads' recent debut. The Facebook Ads structure is very similar to FriendFeed (which I blogged my negative reaction to here. How very prescient that post now seems.)
The person I live with (who happens to be a lawyer) directed my attention to this WSJ law blog post on Facebook Ads. The post discusses how the Ads are possibly violating privacy laws---this Huffington Post column expands on this topic, and points out some things that I did not know about the corporate ads. Did you know that if you rent a video online at Blockbuster, a pop-up will ask you if you would like to notify Facebook of your rental? If you do not respond to the pop-up in fifteen seconds--the pop-up goes away, and a 'Yes' is sent to Facebook. Wow.
The recent OCLC report, Sharing, Privacy and Trust in Our Networked World, reported that over 68% of college students felt it was important to keep their personal information private (see Appendix A, p. 10) How is this new level of transparency and little privacy on Facebook sitting with them? What does this lack of privacy mean for the future Social Web? Do students care about this now? Or is it something that will only resonate with them twenty years from now when they are dealing with the ramifications of all of this personal info floating about online?
Much more to read on this---here, here, here, and here.
One of the articles/posts on this refers to the many Ad-related news feed items as spam--and that's exactly what they are. Will this drive users away? Is there a way to keep a robust social network thriving (and make a profit) without over-commericalizing the entire thing?
I can sympathize with your feelings of late...I've been nostalgic for the old facebook that was clean and free of ads...I feel like they've polluted it now with the feed ridiculousness and also the raunchy ads (like the plethora of underwear ads!). I felt like the apps piece was a good thing, but then it went too far with opening to more advertising and google indexing. Hmm.