The Facebook-volution!

Facebook is a problem. A problem that will eventually sort itself out. I hope.

The biggest problem with Facebook/Myspace is that they both put a face on internet activities. This is a problem because one of the greatest goods the internet offers is the ability to become anyone you want to be. You have the ability to flesh out ideas and test them in a world that is free from most serious reprisals. It's pretty similar to the learning environment in a home.

In your home, you test out thoughts and ideas within your family unit. Inside a healthy family unit, this type of activity provides lots of development opportunities because you can fail and nobody really cares. They'll still be your family, and still love and care for you. The internet used to be populated solely by places similar to this. You could mess up, but as long as you weren't a permanent jerk-head, it wouldn't take long for the memories to fade. Usually about 6-8 hours. And those were rarely connected with the real you. But with the advent of Facebook, what you say and do on the internet (and sometimes real life) is connected to you forever.

And it's usually freely accessible by anyone who cares enough to look. And people freely upload this information in vast quantities. So your employers, neighbors, teachers, and stalkers can find out all sorts of delightfully personal information about you and those you care about. I predict that in the next 5 years (it will take 2-3 for it to start catching, it should be mostly burned out and stabilized in 5 years) we will see a shift from these severely public forums back to anonymous places such as 4chan, slashdot, and other forums. Sure you can make those places public, but the default behavior is set to super-private.

So remember, when you see the shift coming, you saw it here first!