Chris Peterson

So Facebook has announced a redesign.

The update, as I understand/conceptualize it, consists of two elements.

One element is a redesign of the user’s profile aesthetically. This is known as “Cover”. The user profile now has a big banner image, a small mugshot, and two columns of content along the page. I like Cover a lot. It’s a much more visually appealing use of the space. Feels very modern and clean.

The other element is “Timeline.” As I understand it, Timeline works by allowing your friends to basically experience highlights of your time on Facebook by scrolling back chronologically.

Here’s their video demonstrating it:

I think Timeline in many ways represents my biggest privacy fears about Facebook. I’ve written a lot about Facebook has collapsed the spatial contexts that define social situations; now, it’s launched an assault on the chronological contexts as well. Of course, it was always possible to just click through the bottom of a user’s page to see old wall posts, or to photostalk into history. But it wasn’t this simple, and degree of difficulty means everything in this space.

I’m still trying to sort my thoughts out about this, and this blog post is as much about organizing my thoughts as anything else. But I am coming to think that there is a trend across Facebook design decisions, and that trend could be loosely characterized as follows:

In the beginning, Facebook essentially served as a platform for establishing and maintaining weak ties. Not only was the technology not nearly as advanced as it is now, but the audience – remember, limited to just college students – was also very thin. Both the simple technology and the thin potential audience meant that it was pretty difficult to collapse contexts, because the limitations of the space and audience effectively (not identically) worked like the informational constraints of the real world.

As time has gone on, both of these things have changed. One thing which has changed is the fact that Facebook is now delivered to a much broader audience. And the other thing which has changed is that the technology now supports a much deeper interaction among members of that audience.

This Wired interview with Chris Cox, Facebook VP of Product was very informative:

Cox says that instead of that brief conversation you used to get by scanning the previous version of the profile, visiting the profile will be the equivalent of going to a bar to have a long overdue five-hour soul exchange. “It’s that conversation where you play the jukebox till it runs out, the bar closes, and you walk about and say, ‘Man, that was really deep,’” he says.

But here is the thing. There are a lot of people with whom I am friends on Facebook that I would not go into a bar with five hours and bare my soul to. That is not what Facebook was historically for, and I don’t think that’s how most of its users want it to work.

Cox’s conception of Facebook is as if it were connecting a bunch of people with strong ties. And it is true that I am Facebook Friends with my very best friends in the world. But it is also true that there are 600 people with whom I am Friends that I like maintaining loose contact with but wouldn’t bare my soul to.

When you think about it this way, it’s a striking transformation. What began, by design and audience, as a social utility intended to facilitate the maintenance of weak ties has become, by design and audience, a social utility built around profound sharing with supposedly strong ties. It’s a complete overhaul of the entire social ecosystem, and a complete reversal of Facebook’s mission and role in people’s lives.

Still trying to think through all of the implications of this, and would love to hear other’s thoughts as well.