Saturday, March 03, 2018
Facebook usage plummet coz it's like Hyde Park Speaker's corner
My FB activity has considerably dipped, and apparently it's part of a worldwide trend. It will be ironic if I end the upload this post on my Facebook wall, so I will not do that.
I have 1000+ friends on FB- inevitable after UG + PG plus work at a few companies. But I am barely in touch with many of them. Therefore, talking to this crowd increasingly seems like putting up a mike and talking at Speaker's corner in Hyde Park. And observing their posts increasingly seems like being a peeping tom and prying through the window into a neighbor's home. And because I have 1,000 + friends, posts from my hostel room neighbor (room 243) of 4 years are lost in the noise of my 'wall'. So I do not see 243's post, do not put a disparaging and tawdry comment, and therefore room 244 does not have a chance to react to my comment with an equally tawdry put-downer. This passing of the conversational baton between room 240 (me), room 243 (AA) and 244 (VP) is what was the initial charm of FB. Now that's gone. Further, for Hyde Park speaker corner effect, there is Twitter anyway. Where I can listen to Elon Musk and Anand Mahindra and PM Modi.
However, I have both room 243 and room 244 in a common whatsapp group. Therefore, Whatsapp is doing what FB initially used to do. Good for FB, that it owns whatsapp, and has therefore not lost all 3 of us users.
Physical friendships are like layers of an onion- you are a different person with the innermost layer, and obviously there is the outermost layer. The way FB is now, it's squished that onion and all its layers completely, and made onion juice out of it. And I don't think people like to drink onion juice.
My modus operandi for FB usage now is only to connect back with long lost friends (used recently with VP and a couple years ago with SRT). And in that case, I use the messenger anyway, and avoid the community square.
Most of the new activity on FB I think will be from the new internet generation- the 100 millions of 'Bharat' who will be new to this cycle. FB start with being the cosy dorm room for them, then it will become impersonal Hyde park, at which point, they too will withdraw, only coming out infrequently. VR etc may help, but then again, it will be for a closed group setting like Whatsapp, and not the community park model.
I have 1000+ friends on FB- inevitable after UG + PG plus work at a few companies. But I am barely in touch with many of them. Therefore, talking to this crowd increasingly seems like putting up a mike and talking at Speaker's corner in Hyde Park. And observing their posts increasingly seems like being a peeping tom and prying through the window into a neighbor's home. And because I have 1,000 + friends, posts from my hostel room neighbor (room 243) of 4 years are lost in the noise of my 'wall'. So I do not see 243's post, do not put a disparaging and tawdry comment, and therefore room 244 does not have a chance to react to my comment with an equally tawdry put-downer. This passing of the conversational baton between room 240 (me), room 243 (AA) and 244 (VP) is what was the initial charm of FB. Now that's gone. Further, for Hyde Park speaker corner effect, there is Twitter anyway. Where I can listen to Elon Musk and Anand Mahindra and PM Modi.
However, I have both room 243 and room 244 in a common whatsapp group. Therefore, Whatsapp is doing what FB initially used to do. Good for FB, that it owns whatsapp, and has therefore not lost all 3 of us users.
Physical friendships are like layers of an onion- you are a different person with the innermost layer, and obviously there is the outermost layer. The way FB is now, it's squished that onion and all its layers completely, and made onion juice out of it. And I don't think people like to drink onion juice.
My modus operandi for FB usage now is only to connect back with long lost friends (used recently with VP and a couple years ago with SRT). And in that case, I use the messenger anyway, and avoid the community square.
Most of the new activity on FB I think will be from the new internet generation- the 100 millions of 'Bharat' who will be new to this cycle. FB start with being the cosy dorm room for them, then it will become impersonal Hyde park, at which point, they too will withdraw, only coming out infrequently. VR etc may help, but then again, it will be for a closed group setting like Whatsapp, and not the community park model.
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