Has Facebook gone too far? At some point, is there such a thing as "too much information?" One of the driving theories behind Ricochet is that sometimes -- maybe often -- people want to share and discuss things with a limited group of people. People who share a common world view. We don't always want to be debating the fundamentals all the time.
Facebook, for a lot of us, is an innocuous place for innocuous posts. Ricochet is a place for discussion and debate and community bonding. Those are very different things.
Mark Zuckerberg, the brilliant 20-something behind Facebook, takes a different view. From AdAge:
Remember Zuckerberg's Law? Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg famously articulated it at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco in November 2008:
"I would expect that next year, people will share twice as much information as they share this year, and next year, they will be sharing twice as much as they did the year before," he told the assembled masses. "That means that people are using Facebook, and the applications and the ecosystem, more and more." That simple statement was received as an oracular pronouncement in large part because various observers, including The New York Times' Saul Hansell, immediately dubbed it Zuckerberg's Law. It was an obvious echo of Moore's Law, the historical computing trend first described in 1965 by Intel cofounder Gordon Moore, who noted that the number of transistors contained on mass-produced chips -- i.e., computing power -- tends to double every year.
But there's a limit to sharing, isn't there? Especially now, when Facebook is everywhere:
...as ZDNet Editor-in-Chief Larry Dignan put it in a post last week titled "iOS 6 Facebook Integration: A Frictionless Sharing Nightmare," the promise of getting to "log in to Facebook once and share away" without having to worry about launching an app, will soon result in way too many people who will "forget they're oversharing and ultimately have a cringeworthy event. ... Unless you manage Facebook closely, you'll wind up sharing more than you want. Aside from the obvious battery-life issues, the integration may encourage people to stay logged out of Facebook."
Zuckerberg might argue that the concept of "cringeworthy" oversharing is meaningless to digital natives, and that personal privacy/boundaries are fuddy-duddy notions that will diminish as everyone gets more comfortable with their lives becoming open (Face)books -- and as old fogies who still care about privacy/boundaries shuffle off this mortal coil. Fine. Maybe that's true. And maybe a lot of people won't log out of Facebook on their Apple devices for fear of oversharing.
Then what? Well, that's where the Law of Diminishing Returns comes in. Because a massive flood of new Facebook "shares" from iOS users will become a nightmare in another way: The noise will increasingly drown out the signal.
There's such a thing as Too Much Information. And maybe it's generational -- maybe younger folks are just used to sharing everything all the time. But what happens when they grow up?
How could a guy so brilliant not understand that his increasingly overshare-y Facebook is diminishing our collective capacity to focus on the stuff we really might care about in social media, let alone advertising messages?
I blame it on what I call Zuckerberg's Bubble -- not a reference to the current (and rapidly deflating, thanks to FB's IPO) tech bubble, but to the social bubble Zuckerberg has been living in since his Harvard dorm-room days, when he started monomaniacally coding Facebook into existence. When you're in college, and still trying to figure out your identity, you're almost hardwired to feel like you're being left out (especially if you're a nerd) of all the coolest stuff that's going on, both on and off campus. So you convince yourself that you actually care what all your friends and acquaintances are doing at all times.
And then you graduate from college and get a real job and start building your own family, and you suddenly realize that there's more to life than obsessing about what everyone else is doing.
More to life than obsessing about what everyone else is doing? Sure. But there's also a need -- I hope; it's the entirety of the Ricochet business model -- for a place where you know you're among like-minded folks. Where conversation matters.
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Apr '11
Re: TMI
The Police thought so. Sorry, couldn't resist.
Jun '10
Re: TMI
I hate Facebook. I love Ricochet. Both for the reasons Rob gave. At Facebook, you exhibit yourself--here we talk.
Sep '10
Re: TMI
From what I can see, Facebook is slowly sliding down the same curve that MySpace did years ago. My opinion isn't based on any data, mind you, just on my impression of the FB posts that I see every day. A few of my FB friends write a few interesting posts but the majority send off stuff that is--sorry, FB friends!--deeply uninteresting. The signal to noise ratio is very low.
Facebook was interesting when it started, but now it's boring.
I think it will survive for a long time--many older people use it to stay in touch with their grandchildren. But "older people use it to stay in touch with their grandchildren" isn't something I'd want to pitch to investors.
Feb '11
Re: TMI
The thing I thought I would like about Facebook is finding friends from high school, college, etc. The thing I have found devastating about Facebook is that these friends I was once close to are now complete strangers.
Aug '10
Re: TMI
I chuckle whenever I see one of those automatic posts from Socialcam. My friends appear to be completely unaware that all their Facebook friends have been notified that they've viewed the video of "Kelly Ripa's Amazing Legcross."
I like applications such as Instagram and Spotify, but I always disable sharing of such activity via Facebook.
Apr '12
Re: TMI
I partly joined Ricochet so I could argue about things here, where people actually want to, instead of on Facebook, where most people just want you to "like" them.
Aug '11
Re: TMI
I'm bothered by Zuckerberg's description of Facebook as an "ecosystem."
Oct '10
Re: TMI
All this "sharing" is simply boring. Get a life. Even Zuckerberg, with all his wealth, will eventually discover that he has no life. And, the lives of others do not satisfy.
Ricochettians do share the fundamentals of world view... to a point. I vigorously dispute the world view of atheists and libertarians, but I enjoy the fact that we can respectfully disagree and even, at moments, score points by making convincing arguments.
The best compliment I can pay to Peter and Rob is that I am not the same guy I was two years ago. Being limited to 200 words helps a great deal, and is so frustrating at moments. Thanks especially to the folks I most strongly disagree with.
And, back to Facebook. MEH!!
Apr '11
Re: TMI
Friendface!
Friendface!!
FRIENDFACE!!
Oct '10
Re: TMI
Hmmm, doesn't Rob's post, especially his last paragraph, sound faintly familiar? Hmmmm...like sometimes we want to be where everybody knows your name? And they're always glad you came? You want to be where you can see our troubles are all the same?
Anyone recognize that in his post? No? Is it just me?
Oct '10
Re: TMI
Raycon, I was coming down to post something in the same vein:
I'm sure to The Nation and Mother Jones readers, Ricochet probably looks like a monolithic bastion of the Right, but once inside the viewpoints are many and varied. I doubt anyone joins Ricochet to have their conservative or libertarian ideas rubber-stamped by the editors or fellow members. If so, they're in for a big surprise.
The common ground we do have on the fundamentals is necessary for getting beyond the basic disagreements, as Rob says. Like the C.S.Lewis book on the essentials of Christianity, I think we're hashing out a Mere Conservatism/Libertarianism.
Mar '11
Re: TMI
There is a very old friend of mine (we've known each other since grade school) who apparently cannot have a conscious thought without firing it off to the world via Facebook. I don't want to block her, because most all of it is so nice, but it's like kittens and rainbows and happy thoughts coming out of a 400 psi fire hose.
(Hmmm...mebbe if I share this on my wall....)
Sep '11
Re: TMI
I refuse to post much besides pictures of my knitting projects, and occasional check-ins at my Krav Maga gym. It's mostly a way to keep track of a couple of networking groups I belong to and of which bands' shows I'm missing out on in Austin.
I have a large number of conservative friends and a slightly smaller number of liberal friends, but, "oddly," the only folks who post any sort of political statements are the libs...
Edited on June 20, 2012 at 6:10pmJan '11
Re: TMI
Want proof?
Gay marriage. Romney. Ron Paul. Kenneth.
The usefulness of the Jesuits. (OK, I may be the lone holdout on this one, but the point is ...)
Dec '11
Re: TMI
Wasn't T. S. Eliot talking about "TMI" before the acronym or its present-day manifestation?
I'm only slightly familiar with Eliot's work, but I once read these lines of his from a play called "The Rock", and they have stuck with me.
"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? / Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"
So, how can a site like Ricochet help make us knowledgable in a world of de-contextualized information, and how can we use such a site to go beyond knowledge to wisdom?
First, by not being Facebook!!
Secondly, well... are there any Marshall McLuhan or Neil Postman fans out there who could offer their assistance?
Sep '10
Re: TMI
I noticed that too. Repurposing!
May '10
Re: TMI
So I watched The Social Network. If Zuckerberg's personality is even one-tenth as pathological as the movie portrayed it, I doubt he much less cares about these questions or even recognizes them as a potential problem. I also doubt it will concern him to hear me say that I seriously ponder deleting my Facebook account whole hog at least twice a week.
Aug '11
Re: TMI
I have a sense that Facebook's popularity is waning. I haven't seen any stats, but my gut tells me.
Sep '11
Re: TMI
I said it on an Audio Meetup, and I'll write it here: the most compelling thing about Ricochet is that you can participate in lively conversations among people who are well-mannered...and can spell.
"D00d, ur so a h8ter..." Please.
I frequently post to Facebook--mostly keeping friends and family up to speed on the doings of Daughter[3]--and how she cruelly keeps me from ever getting to ride Stick Pony; it's also a place to echo information about 4-H events, church activities, and things like that.
Facebook (at best): genial blather; Ricochet (any day) insightful discussion that any denizen of something like The Daily Kos could only dream of.
May '10
Re: TMI
The notion that younger people will be willing to live with their life as an open book is naive and liberal. It assumes good will everywhere in life. In a nightmare scenario facebook postings can be used against you by the government. Less venal, but still disturbing is when less powerful actors will use it agianst you (e.g. a potential employer does not hire you or a broken friendship because you shared too much).
As people grow up and realize their own faults, they will be less willing to share their entire private lives on FB. A few incidents getting publicity could acceerate the process.
At the same time, FB is probably aware of this and may very well be working behind the scenes to sharpen the targeting and allowing users to get meaningful control. A possible concept is that you can control what you want to share with whom - this could actually be benficial for advertizers and users. I get adds I am interested in and advertizers do not need to shoot in the dark.