Google’s recent unveiling of the OpenSocial system is a clear statement of intent – it is an intention for dominance. At a technical level, the Google initiative attempts to standardize application procedures, thus enabling every program developer’s platforms to cater across all social network sites.
The alternate viewpoint is that this goal brings potentially difficult consequences. To equip each site with universalized, similar features is to dangerously produce a mass-commercialized commodity. Directly, it threatens each entities’ unique identity and defining character. They risk becoming commonplace.
Google’s underlying reason is unmistakable, however. The reason is that standardization broadens Google’s influence in the social networking sphere.
Rather than acting as a means of entertainment, utilitarianism or information, social networking sites primarily glorify human relations. Often, they function by creating and strengthening relationships through bytes rather than beers. In this realm, everyday people are main actors – the face of social networks, literally taken at face value. And who better to explain this phenomenon other than Facebook?
Facebook fulfills dreams. It allows us to be the person we want to be, at least in the internet world. Providently, Facebook inflates one’s conception of self-importance, and vice-versa. The profile additions by individuals every few minutes can be affirmations to one’s existence, with the amount of wall posts acting as complements to one’s popularity. Gaming applications, such as Vampires, add excitement. We also become active participants in joining groups and proclaiming support to presidential candidates. All these act to validate one’s expectation.
Facebook exemplifies our voyeurism. In long stretches, it fulfills our innate longing to observing others in privacy, as well as reaching out at opportune moments. In watching posted videos of politicians bumbling or photos of our peers drunken escapades, we sometimes sneer, even satirize. We also express sympathy and poignantly empathize when we collectively mourn the passing of a friend, their Facebook walls engraving remnants of our recollections. Subconsciously, we even delightedly consume information of the downright arbitrary and trivial: “ABC is ARGHHH” and “XYZ is thinking.” We become observing participants, watching through the fluorescent cloak of a liquid display screen.
Aggregately, Facebook’s impact often compares to a mass-produced modern yearbook. Information and details are compiled, stored and constantly updated. As recipients, we choose to read and reread, displaying an interest of another’s life. Yet, in choosing to sometimes obsessively monitor the lives of others, we are forsaking our own narrative of excitement and adventure. Facebook doesn’t merely add to our story – it emerges as our story.
The irony is that as the primary beneficiaries, we are also the primary losers. We can easily scribble wall messages and send online gifts, neglecting the consuming manual labor taken to writing postcards or sending actual gifts. Undoubtedly, social networks function through maintenance – in this case, absence is presence, because it reflects a different form of outreach. However, it is a presence without the essential human quality and maintenance without the human touch. Our relationships become digitalized, not actualized.
In previously declining Yahoo!’s 900 million dollar offer, Facebook’s founder, Harvard dropout Mark Zuckerberg remarked that he was more interested in witnessing the cosmic growth of the vast social network. His remark was quietly innocuous, but he was audibly echoing our conceptions about the future importance of social networks.
The future of that world is one where the distinction between reality and fantasy blurs, enmeshed in layers of virtual ideals. It is a world where our expectations are shaped and impressions are reinforced through online profiles. The dangers – and possibilities – are numerous.
ZACH HAN will facebook you from zklhan@ucdavis.edu.
