Yes, I believe Facebook is ruining Facebook and the Web. While this may be an extreme view, I’d like you to at least hear me out.
So now Websites are using my “friends” on Facebook to influence a “personalized” Web experience for me on third party sites. All I have to say to that is… thanks but no thanks.
How Facebook Is Hurting The Web
Like most people o n Facebook, my friends are extremely diverse. I have friends that I’ve known since middle school, co-workers, former co-workers, professional acquantiences, family members, and I think you get the idea.
It makes sense that since my friends are so diverse in nature, that their likes and tastes would greatly differ from mine. This is wherein the problem lies. If I want to know what my friends are doing, what they’re reading, what they’re sharing, where they’re going, and what they’re saying… I’ll log into Facebook and read my status updates. However, I don’t want a personalized experience on third party sites (like CNN) based on my friends’ preferences. We’re too different.
Example: I’ve added friends who are Vegan… I’m not Vegan, I don’t like Vegan food, and I typically won’t go to a Vegan restaurant. When I sign on to a shoe website, I don’t want to be shown “non-leather” based sneakers. Let me pick what I want to see.
This type of personalized experience may cause me and many others to stop using sites that are built around the OpenGraph type framework. This may very well result in lost actual and potential revenue as well as other key performance indicator goals that are important to acheive businss objectives.
How Facebook Is Hurting Facebook
Here is where I believe Facebook is going to hurt itself. There are plenty of consumers who want the personalized experience on third party sites. And this is fair. There is a percentage of people who are only interested in what their friends are interested in. The problem goes back to what I mentioned earlier… What happens when a diverse group of friends on Facebook cause inaccurate personalized experiences on third party sites?
I can see in the very near future, friends removing friends because personalized Web experiences are not accurate. This could lead to friends only being friends with people who have similar interests and in the end, akes taway from what Facebook was intially created for and what people love about it.
In closing, I’ll just say that I’m sure there are plenty of folks who will disagree with me… but this is just my humble opinion.
