As soon as the new profile settings were launched yesterday my wall was inundated with updates from friends who’d updated their personal information so as to fill the new profile bar.
On the surface it looks like a simple design change so as to offer up even more information and make Facebook even more accessible. Facebook says Facebook will now have “more ways to show and tell your story”. Thank you Facebook, we’re not worthy.
But I think I am going to agree with @daveknox who has taken the cynical view to the changes. For him, the new profile switch-a-roo is a clever way of getting us to stuff our pages with sweet, sweet information ripe for the plucking.
The profile information is now top and centre and it will encourage people to keep updating. Mmmmm sweet information – music tastes, career paths, home towns, favourite TV shows, political leanings – great stuff Facebook can sell and take one more step towards taking over the world becoming even more awesomely awesome.
So is this all bad? One hand this info is out there, people have filled in their profiles, but now they’ll be inclined to do it more often. Also, our information – from who we vote for to what we bought last week – is recorded and sold one hundred times over so this isn’t new. But on the other hand this is Facebook becoming less cool and more, well evil. Facebook used to be an exclusive club but now it’s a bit like a corporate market research exercise and that’s a little bit sad.
Right, better update my profile….
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