I am not one of those people.
Listen, this happens every year. Facebook introduces something new, people don't like it, and then a few weeks later those same people realize that the world is still spinning on an axial tilt of 23 degrees, and they go back to updating their status 15 times a day. I've read this story, and the ending hasn't changed.
I'm not pretending that the new features released so far didn't take some adjusting. I'm simply choosing to skip the first 6 stages of grief (Denial, Pain, Anger, Bargaining, Sadness, Reconstruction), and immediately move into the 7th stage of Acceptance.
With that mindset, I actually thought that the new 'top story' function, and the ability to self-select them, was cool and helpful. The ticker made me realize just how many updates are, in fact, happening every minute of the day, and that this feature was probably necessary if not now than in the near future. As we know, each person's social sharing continues to double each year under the Mark Zuckerberg's self-proclaimed Law. Let's also remember that the biggest changes have not yet been released.
I'll cut to the chase: Timeline is going to piss some people off. And, from a profile perspective, it will most likely completely change the way you think, feel and use Facebook. That said, it's not all bad. Timeline will be intuitive and suggest what should be displayed, so you don't have to do all the work. It will also be great to look at your Timeline a few years down the road to see what milestones or tomfoolery happened. It might even motivate some people to add new photos of old events, like your hairstyle from the 80s, or how cute you thought you were as a child. This, of course, all ties back to Zuck's Law that people will share more and more stuff each year...even if they need to back in time to do it.
The other biggie that's not yet released are the new 'Read, Watch, Listen' buttons for sharing movies, music, articles, and more. As Zuck explained in his F8 keynote, we could previously 'Like' any noun, and now we will have any verb, such as 'Read', with any noun, such as 'Book'. While this sounds cool, and will probably lead to a broader, more open social sharing language, I gotta say that I question this feature. Facebook did such a great job at building up the equity in the Like button across the web. Millions of users associate the Like button with the Facebook brand more than any other site feature. For this reason, it has a lot of brand equity. Plus, it's easy and consistent across the web. Branching out into different 'verbs' might have a diluting effect on this equity and, in turn, Facebook's ever-growing presence online. Then again, maybe I'll just accept this change like a new friend request: sometimes unsure, but knowing that it usually works out.
After all, Zuck has given us enough reasons to put our faith in him, so I will continue to do so. Partly because I do not have a choice. But mostly because he has a success rate that is miles above average. And, if that's not enough, we can just look to his bank account to see a few billion more reasons why Zuck will most likely continue to make Facebook and the Internet better for everyone. No pressure. ~ p.
