In 2007 I was very slowly finishing up my B.A. at the University of Toronto, and I remember talking to some people in Anthropology who were writing 4th year term papers about Facebook. And I remember laughing. A term paper on Facebook? At this University? I may have smoothed my imaginary sweater vest and swirled some invisible brandy. Maybe I just smiled politely. Now, as Billy Shakes said, the wheel has come full circle. It’s not a term paper, but are blog posts not the term papers of post-grad college diploma programs? Written at the 11th hour, with the student on the brink of some kind of collegial insanity? You see where I’m going with this.
Yup. Facebook. Specifically, is this the beginning of the end for the venerable FB, Fakebook, Facebonk, Crackbook, whatever you want to call it? I joked once that eventually the entire Internet would collapse in on itself, leaving only Facebook as the one single site on all the web. A scary thought, no? It seemed like it might happen for a while. Facebook started allowing applications, and soon you didn’t need to go anywhere else to play Scrabble or Tetris or find out what kind of dining set defines you as a person. Groups were good, photos were good, importing blogs from other sites was ok, and procrastistalking acquaintances was sinfully delicious.
Then Twitter came and ruined the fun. It took the best part of Facebook, the status update, and made anyone who could express a complete thought in 140 characters or less feel like a brilliant communicator and all-around Big Deal (which is how macro-bloggers feel every minute of every day).
Worse, Twitter stole Facebook’s media darling status. Well, almost. Facebook is still the media’s tasteless resource of choice to get pictures of teens killed in car accidents, but Twitter is creeping up on the FB as the main point of reference for what’s new and hot in news and culture. There have been three Serious Articles about Twitter in the Globe and Mail in the last five days, and more than a hundred less serious news items since March 1st.
At The Globe, Margaret Wente, Ian Brown, and Sarah Hampson have been writing high-profile pieces about Twitter. But what about poor Facebook? Only Lynn Crosbie remains at the ramparts, defending the castle. Interesting that it is Facebook’s new layout that is getting the attention. The new layout everyone hates. The new layout that has generated more than 600,000 comments on the Vote on the New Facebook Layout page. The new layout that looks like…Twitter.
Some kind of horrible bizarro version of Twitter, where you can’t customize your themes and instead of just status updates, all that previously beautifully categorized content is jammed in, without differentiation, labels, or any of that neat stuff that helps a human brain parse information. If Facebook wants to keep itself in the social networking forefront, it should be moving toward a more organized, logical, and intuitive version of itself. Not a cut-rate version of something that works because of its simplicity, not in spite of it.
Eventually we’ll all get used to the new FB, and the next time they change it there will be another poll with comically oversized thumbs. Eventually something else will come along and Facebook will be the joke that Friendster now is. Like that mumbly old dreamboat Bob Dylan says, you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone, for the times they are a-changin’.


