Why Facebook's Timeline is useless (Part-1)
Since a couple of days, I've had a revalation. You know, one of those shower clicks you get once in a while if you are a typical wanna-be-geek like me.
Timeline does not solve any problem. Yes it looks cool. Yes it is a technological achievement to fetch all that information in blink of an eye. Yes it makes our memories even more memorable and documentable (which is debatable). But it does not solve any problem per se. Coolness does not solve problems.
Timeline did not get executed properly. There was a lot of hype about it around the blogosphere and by Facebook itself at the F8 conference, but even after 4 months its no where near launched completely. This puts another dent on face book's not-so-immaculate track record when it comes to changes. I love it when Facebook breaks the status-coup and makes a change for the better of the users like the newsfeed changes earlier in 2011. I was also seduced by the apparently sexiness of the Timeline - but don't think it solves any problem.
So what problem should have been solved?
The biggest problem with internet in general and social networks (read Facebook/Twitter/Youtube) in particular is that it suffers from chronic amnesia and as a side-effect, paranoia. What's worse is that its completely oblivious of this condition - and as a meme does, it propagates like a virus - users its hosts. People are more impulsive in posting things and other people are as if waiting to accept and get excited about anything that they see on their profiles/feeds. The amnesia side is evident when old articles are posted again and again - and if they are horrific, it creates paranoia. But paranoia is quickly overridden by something nice a user see's on their profile and amnesia kicks in again. The whole thing usually gets forgotten very quickly, and this is a major problem that is going to haunt the internet if not fixed right now. Things get lost and forgotten really easily and events like OccupyWallStreet and others pick up quickly, die quickly - typical impulsiveness. The social network corporations are selling the drug any young generation longs for - a small shot of excitement. So, internet is suffering from short term memory loss. The only revenue they are making at all is through ads. The strategy is simple : keep the users busy on your service while you show "relevant" ads. Is it all about the money?
Second problem, which the open graph and the semantic web should have solved by now - and especially I wanted it to be solved by the Timeline feature - is that the information is still isolated. Not only topic wise (which I admit is getting better) but time wise. This creates a void of context, leaves reader with no other option to accept what is being posted. It makes the spam harder to tackle - and useful information harder to track. (Some services tackle this in one way or the other). The biggest headache is trying to find a song that my friend posted on his Facebook profile. But since we have amnesia, we forget that we have forgotten where it was. Don't tell me you've never had a moment like that? Its NOT your fault!
Third, the information lacks packaging. If there is any packaging at all, it exists with the corporations that produce the information. User's trust the source - but at the end of the day they are interested in the content only. WSJ, Mashable, Techcrunch, 9to5Mac and other very credible sources can sometimes get away with paid for content without informing the users. Even if they are one off incidents, they create a bad market (which is evident in some products going dead only after getting a download link via these sites because they could not sustain it). It also affects democracy and explorability. If I am reading a review of a product on Amazon, why should I have to bother and see what Barnes and Nobles users say about that particular book? If I am reading tech crunch about an Android device, why should I be limited to just tech-crunch when nearly all the web is posting something. To some extent, there are products that are trying to resolve this (e.g. comparison search engines etc.). Facebook trys to bring up the most shared things on top, try to chunk the information. But again, do you have a say in it? Can YOU dig deeper in that graph?. No!
So it all boils down to three basic problems: amnesia, connection and packaging. All this should have been the root problem the timeline is solving. Its meant to slow things down on the internet, put a valve on the firehose of information, bring the information into a democratic connection - and package it the way user's would love to consume.
The thoughtful among us hate the internet right now. The thoughtful among us hate the news. The thoughtful among us hate the technology. The thoughtful of us hate the corporations that are bombarding us with breaking news and imposing advertisements.
Its time someone sets it right.
