Sly social

Facebook's F8 event event and it's subsequent announcements marked a major turning point in social media. Mark Zuckerberg announced a slew of new features at the event which all put hands into one resounding theme - sharing. Netflix and Spotify integration are all about sharing our media and content, the new Facebook timeline is all about sharing our past, the new profile 'cover photo' is all about sharing a bit of who we are and new application permissions make it easier for third party apps to share some little things about ourselves. But what is it with Facebook's plain obsession with making us users share as much of our lives as possible, and why do we so contently oblige to such seemingly unhealthy amounts of transparency?

Myspace, before the rise of Facebook was insanely popular simply because it allowed us to take full control of our image on the internet. People didn't spend the time pimping up the Myspace profiles and adding the auto-playing song onto their page because it was fun, it was because it would contribute to the way that they wanted their friends to see them. Our Myspace spoke a lot about our character, and through the way we're inescapably wired, getting ourselves out there is very important to us. Ironically, social is a predominantly solipsistic medium that is driven almost purely by our self-obsession. As users, we are so blindly content with sharing every aspect of our social lives on Facebook because we feel the need to inform others of the kind of person we are because hey, we're important. Why do we people bother checking into places? We do it because its important that our friends know that we're not a hopeless low-life who leaves the house less than the trash can - and perhaps checking in at a library will help us build our character as an intellectual or checking in at a football stadium will help us build our character as 'the sports fanatic'.

Facebook is taking all the steps to make sure they foster and provide for this growing online culture of self-obsession; they're adding the features to make sharing and individualistic behaviour that much easier.  The announcement that apps will only be required to ask once before posting activities to our walls breaks down that fence that has so long separated the virtual technological world to the real organic world that we live in.

Let's take this fictitious, though entirely plausible scenario for an example - perhaps we're going for a run and there's an app on our smartphone that tracks and monitors our run with contextual metadata like calories burnt, distance and speed. This app connects to our Facebook and allows us to post this information on our walls to share with our friends. In the past, this would require a prompt in which the app asks us permission to do this, but now it only has to ask once, the very first time. Essentially, the things that happen in the real world become immediately synchronised with the virtual word of Facebook, in a sense making the service a deeply connected attachment to ourselves. Facebook now becomes a parallel and always up-to-date technological porting of our lives.

So, what's the significance of Facebook's timeline feature? The timeline feature simply augments and manifests upon the idea of 'the Facebook second life', because when utilised to its absolute fullest the timeline becomes practically our life story. We're currently living in an age where it's not ridiculous for a new-born baby to have a Facebook profile. Naturally, Mark Zuckerberg encourages this, particularly with the release of the new 'expected child' feature. However, it's not solely because Mark Zuckerberg wants to endlessly increase Facebook's user base, but it's because he wants to connect with the user base. He wants Facebook to connect to the user base in such a manner that deleting a Facebook profile would be almost equivalent to semi-suicide. By unethically, albeit cleverly taking advantage of clueless new-borns, Facebook is hoping to inaugurate a generation of Facebook users who will have timelines that really do begin with their lives. Imagine growing up as one of these infants and trying to delete your Facebook profile in 15 years time - an archive of your life story that you've had with you since the day you were born? Yes, it is semi-suicide.

By cleverly leveraging upon the idea of user self-obsession, Zuckerberg will have locked us users into his service in such a deep personal way that we can't ever quit. And what better time to force the loyalty of users than now, a time when Google+ appears genuinely threatening.

Sure, it's easy to say I won't get hooked on Facebook and I won't get trapped, but the simple fact is that most of us already are. How many of you could quickly and easily delete your Facebook profile and tell yourself honestly that this decision will be entirely regret-free? It's time to just stop and have a look at the direction Zuckerberg is leading us in social media, we can't allow ourselves to be turned into mindless zombies for transparency living an inescapable second life that we never even asked for.