Within the “next few weeks,” your Facebook profile
will be forced to go the Timeline route. The general consensus among the media
is that you’re either going to love or hate your new profile. Yes, it’s more
customized, highlighted by the massive cover image that you now have. Yes, it
allows you to share more of your life. At the same time, the new Facebook
profile is less of a profile and more of a biography, chronicling your entire
Facebook history since the moment your joined the social networking site.
Critics of the Timeline say that it’s information overload. Facebook is well
aware that a biography may make some people unhappy. At the same time, the
Facebook Timeline was created to please advertisers, not the people using the
site…
Facebook is in a social network war against the likes
of Google+ and future attempts to dethrone it as the leader. It also has to
impress investors for its initial public offering (IPO), which is likely to
come in May. Mark Zuckerberg is aware that his site has an enormous competitive
advantage with its 800 million Facebook users. However, he is also aware that
future sites and technologies will compete with Facebook to take time away from
people spending a lot of time on the site. A TIME article noted that people are already
spending less and less time on social networking site. To add to that, Facebook
user growth has stalled.
The best way to counteract such pressures is to
force Facebook users to invest more time in their profiles. The more time they
spend curating their online scrapbooks and the more they are aware that such a scrapbook
exists, the less likely they are to switch to other social sites or engage in
some other form of entertainment.
Furthermore, the more information that Facebook
users share, the more valuable the site is for advertisers, which can target
ads with laser precision. According to Business Week, Facebook profited around
$400 million in 2010, numbers which aren’t that great. Critics of Facebook’s advertising
service say that, by its nature, Facebook isn’t very valuable to advertisers because
people go on Facebook to waste time and not look for solutions to their
problems, something which Google does very well. By creating a biography of
your life, Facebook is trying to makes its ads more relevant to you, even if
you aren’t looking to buy anything while using the site. Also, by spending more
time on the site and increasing the amount of “like” interaction, Facebook is
hoping that its future “sponsored ads” will be a major money
maker.
Facebook is trying to present Timeline as a useful
feature for its users. The real agenda, however, is for Facebook to be more
profitable. There’s nothing wrong with that as its profitability will allow it
to function for decades to come.
