With great frivolity comes great responsibility

[Editor’s Note: I shared a little rant on Facebook this Sat night which attracted a fair bit of attention. I figured some of you ‘Twitter people’ would enjoy it too.]

Dear Facebook,
Have you noticed that the news feed has become boring, bloody predictable, and nauseatingly egotistical? Same old profile picture changes, same old likes, same old live match commentary updates, same old my-kid-is-the-best, same old I’m-so-happy-heres-why, same old Im-so-sad-somebody-hug-me. Im almost missing those I-know-some-of-you-wont-share-this-update updates.
This is all so… 2006.

New idea: limit the # of updates per person. Wait.. That’ll kill your business model won’t it?

Better idea: turn Facebook into The Great Facebook Game’. Put those pesky Zynga-like companies out of business. How would this game work?
Simple: label your current codebase as Level 1 and put your PMs and engineers to work. I mean ‘real’ work. Level 2 is the ‘how well do you know your timeline’ game. Obfuscate all the names in the TL – status updaters, likers and commenters. Well.. You know which friends post 69 pictures of their vacation to Tahiti, right? You know who changes profile pic every weekend like an automaton, right? You know who takes pot shots at AAP every other day, right? Get right to guessing. Yeah – you’d need a new dimension ‘x’ folks ID’d the poster.
…
What about Level 8 or 9? As some of your friends rack up uber points, they could start impersonating you. Now your common friends would have to figure out if it’s the real you or fake. Move over HotOrNot, your time’s finally over.
Hire some of those Linden Lab and Neil Stephenson characters and you can finally show the world what a metaverse is.

Obviously this is not a PRD and this is just a Sat night rant from a runner who has done very low miles in the past fortnight. But do SOMETHING! Put those bored-with-Google-now-at-Facebook folks to better use. And for god’s sake, kill that birthday reminder feature. We were NOT meant to wish all and sundry a happy birthday. Year after year..even in their FORTIES!

Thank you Zuck. For all those wonderful years of frivolity.

Sincerely,
– someone whose data you own

[Closing note: A friend shared a relevant post by MC Siegler – The age of the social network is ending . The part about Secret is particularly interesting. Any of you checked it out?]