I guess 150 facebook friends just isn't enough for me. That, or none of them want to talk to me, or comment on anything I post. But that goes both ways. Either my facebook friends actually don't like me, and have me there just to fill out their contacts on their phone of everyone they have ever met, or they think that they will irritate me if they try to say something, when in all actuality the converse is what is true. With how the paradigm is now, it is rather odd when a single person comments on three of my status updates in a row. It's usually a family member who wants to be more in touch with me. But what if we were having an actual face to face conversation, and I brought up three different subjects through the course of our discussion? I would expect the other person to have something to say about each, or else I would have to be on my way, as I am clearly being boring. What happens in real life is almost the opposite of what happens in social networks.
I am probably the least social person on social networks, and that's why I'm looking into the problem and have ideas about how to make it better. I have had the idea of forcing myself to comment on every status of someone else's that I read. This would be a very big shift in internet behavior for me, and I'm sure people would get irritated with me and start to remove me from their friends list. If I did this from the start, and didn't "friend" every person I ever wanted to silently stalk, or accept friend requests from stalkers, an actually interactive behavior would become my norm and accepted. And those who didn't like it would remove my promptly. I try to be very sincere with anything I say or comment, which would get me in a lot of trouble. A large portion of my friends on facebook are past acquaintances from religious organizations. Since I have stopped attending church, and shifted my religious perspective, I have to restrain myself from posting my real thoughts on their posts, especially when more of them are in an effort to promote their church or their beliefs. I'm sure many of them do the same for me, and facebook turns into a war zone of battling dogma and propaganda more than friendly social interaction, where no one acknowledges each other's points of view, bet everyone knows that all of their friends are well aware of what they are promoting.
But it's a catch twenty two. The large majority of my friends and acquaintances from school remember me as the Christian nut. Now they see that I am catching up with their secularism, but they have been in that life style for so long that they are past the point of preaching it and discussing its dynamics, and just living life.
So that's where I'm at with social networks, in case you wanted to know. What it becomes is just browsing through your stream of status updates, and hoping to come up with something profound or witty enough to get some feedback, because that's the only way to make it actually social.
But,
I like to think of solutions to my problems.
Even if I don't have the tools or the experience to implement the solutions. So when I think of a possible solution, the best I can do is promote it and hope that a person or organization picks it up and does something with it.
My idea is really just adding a restriction to the current setup of facebook. So if this were to be implemented from scratch with a brand new website, the core ideas of facebook and the facebook stream would be very similar and very much the same in the new project.
What if your "friends" were forced to comment?
The main change would be this. On your facebook stream or equivalent, you could only see one friends' status update, whatever update is the most current from your network. What if you wanted to browse more? We all do that from time to time when we get bored, we just start scrolling to read whats on the minds of people we barely know. In this idea, you would have to comment on the first status you see in your stream in order to unlock the next one in your network. And you would have to comment on the second one in order to unlock the third, and so on. Maybe status update's that you have previously commented on are all ready unlocked in another area, in its own stream, so that you can see all of those at any time, with everyone's comments on them, and continue those conversations with another comment whenever you would like, as an option. If everyone in your network, and your friends networks, had this restriction, much more people would have posted their thoughts on each of your friends' status', and each of your status'. Once people actually start talking about what is on everyone's mind, it becomes more like your personal forum with people you know and are getting to know better, instead of a giant advertising campaign of all of your friends interests and associations. If you consistently see someone who doesn't ever have much to say on your status, or is all ways negative, then maybe that person should not be your friend in this network. When everyone is forced to comment, it's much less ambiguous who should be in and who should be out. Your friends really get sorted out into who is still cool with the person you really are, and who has you as a friend just to raise their friend numbers to give them a sense of self gratification. When everyone is forced to comment, you will all ways see what everyone wants to put out there, and no one can hide and just read your updates without acknowledging them.
Facebook and other social networks aren't really about being social until they change them to force social behavior and interactivity. What they are really about first is advertising, and getting your information for that purpose. I think that when community and interactivity is put first, so that it even gives hermits like me a sense of being connected, then everyone will love and flock to whichever website or app does that the best. What I'm saying is that when the priority is reversed so that community comes before monetizing and advertising, your monetizing and advertising and revenue can potentially grow bigger and more profitable. Sharing without interactivity on whatever it is you shared just makes the user extensions of the advertising arm of whatever we are sharing about. Only with lots of commenting and interactivity to follow up is there real social substance. Facebook calls these users the ones who are engaged with their product. Putting community before sharing will grow your number of engaged users and make them even more immersed in the social network, putting more eyeballs on the advertising in the side bar or bottom bar, for longer periods of time. Forcing super interactivity on all users makes it acceptable and even expected from everyone.
At least for a social network,
what benefits the user will eventually benefit the company.
So what if there are users who only post updates and don't browse their facebook stream? To help those users dip their toes in the water, you could require them to comment on one friends' status before unlocking the ability to post one of their own. There isn't that much more you can force that kind of user to do. That is a user who apparently doesn't want to be social anyway. Maybe it will grow on that user when he or she begins getting more comments and interactivity on their own status updates.
So, someone should definitely steal this idea and make a website and/or a mobile phone app out of it, and give it a test run.
