"Facebook used to be cool, and now it's all, like, junkie"
I'm not sure what it means, but my 15 yr old daughter who has been a Facebook fanatic, laments that "Facebook used to be cool, and now it's all, like, junkie"--a sentiment I share given my own experience with Facebook.
By opening up their API, have they imploded under the weight of wave after wave of junk apps--compatibility tests, "hot or not" and the like? My daughter says she has to "ignore" 50 invites a day, even from supposed "friends" in her network, and she doesn't even accept solicitation from anyone outside her network.
My point is that as educators have spoken about being where our students are--being in the spaces that they occupy--being in Facebook and MySpace. I'm not sure what to think about that if my daughter and here friends are already growing weary of them...and yet she doesn't want to start all over again in another social network She feels trapped.
I honestly don't know what this means or how this will all shake out, but I tend to put more trust in my daughter and friends than I do in the industry trend reports. At the same time my Linked-in account has grown quite a bit in the last couple months. Maybe the smaller networks are the more meaningful ones, maybe this is just Facebook experiencing growing pains.
What seems obvious to me is that we educators must create truly helpful/useful or fun applications, and not just empty applications aimed at trying to show how hip we are cuz we've gotta Facebook app too (this is no comment on PSU's recent entry!).
It will be interesting to watch.
-JG
2 comments:
This is a good post and hits at one of the things we all struggle with learning design -- going where they are b/c they are fickle. I am using fickle in a way that suggests that this demographic is very mobile and engaged in quality experiences. I'm looking at them as very proactive in their choices for their time.
FB Apps have started to drive me crazy and my network is small compared to the typical student. I get dozens of invites, pokes, beerfests, and all sorts of other stuff hat I consider spam ... it is most certainly bancn. It would be interesting to imagine that the FB Apps opportunity we all thoughts was wonderful ends up pushing FB into the background.
This is great info to know.
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