Musings over the great Facebook debate - friends are friends

So I was at ‘The great Facebook debate’ yesterday, an event hosted by BT. After some initial statements from people like JP Rangaswami, and some Q&A with them, there was debate over these two motions (I’m not sure on the exact wording):

“It was a mistake to open up the Facebook platform to developers”

“You should not accept you boss’ friend request”

I must say that I was quite disappointed with the wording of these, it led to people talking at cross purposes (perhaps the intent), people repeating the same thing, and people raising non issues. Nevertheless there were still some good points made, and some interesting lines of thought.

As to the first motion I was strongly against. It frustrated me that there were not even any real arguments for it (perhaps I’m being a bit strong here). The panel seemed to focus on the quality of applications, the number of applications and the usefulness of them. These are all valid points, BUT I don’t think that they are valid here. These issues are all down to the developer(s), and are on an app-by-app basis: if you don’t LIKE the applications made then these (reasons) would be good reason to click ‘remove’ or to in fact not add the application in the first place. You shouldn’t say that all applications should be removed because some (if not most) are ‘rubbish’. Remember you don’t have to add the application.

It was the second motion, or the discussion around it, that really interested me. I didn’t actually vote on this one because I really didn’t like the phrasing, it left for a lot of ambiguity (or none depending on the way that you look at it). You could imply from this that “my boss cannot be my friend” or “my boss must be my friend”. I think that the simplest reasoning for “SHOULD I accept a friend request from MY boss” is simply this: “if my boss is my friend then I’ll add him, if he’s not my friend then I won’t add him”. There was a lot of chat about “what if my boss sees pictures of me from the weekend” or “what if my boss reads what some of my friends say to me”, but I think that there’s a bigger point here, I don’t think it just applies to boss’, I think that it is:

“How do I manage my different identities across Facebook (or in life in general)?” JP said last night that if you compartmentalise different parts of your life that you’ll end up with schizophrenia, and I agree with this. The thing is though that most people do have slightly different persona’s or identities depending on the environment that they are in. Everyone adapts but we all adapt differently. There are things that you’ll say to you mother that you won’t tell your friends. There are things that you’ll say to your friends that you won’t say to your colleagues etc. It’s the margins between these differences that you need to think about. Some people may not be all that different at the weekend, some people may be as relaxed around colleagues as they are around friends or family. So I really think that you need to consider what it is you are hoping to achieve or get from Facebook; what part(s) of yourself do you want to be represented.

Consider it this way: Think of Facebook as a party. Now you have many friends, family etc that you could invite. You may be the sort of person where all of your friends get along, all of your family gets along and you could invite who you want and everything would be fine. Or you may be have the situation where some friends or family members do not get along. Or you may know if certain people are there they may offend others or perhaps get you into trouble (telling stories best left private etc). So you have to make a decision what sort of party you want to have, who you want to invite etc. I think Facebook is similar. You may have friends, family and colleagues that you’re perfectly happy to expose to each other and so adding them is fine, but then again you may not want to expose them to each other and in that case you need to choose what route you want to go down. Do I want just my friends as friends, or just my colleagues etc.

Of course there is the ability to profile and restrict access, but most people (rightly or wrongly) probably can’t be bothered to do any real configuration here. So what it normally boils down to is you end up sharing everything with people added as friends.

I think I can sum up with three points:

• Education. There are lots of features and security setting etc that people are not aware of. If people fully understand what the capabilities are, there will be less confusion, and perhaps less concern over issues that then become mute.
• Alignment. If the different aspects of your life are vastly different, then you need to manage (or at least be aware of) how they align or cross over (in Facebook).
• Choice. The web (and indeed life) is all about choice. You CHOOSE to add an application, you CHOOSE to add a friend, you CHOOSE to get drunk and do something stupid (which your friend may post a photo of). At the end of the day Facebook doesn’t force you to do anything. You don’t even have to have a Facebook account. So you cannot blame another person or a website for your actions.

Tags: debate, Facebook, identity, persona, social networking