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Facebook had a lot of potential. It could have been the tremendously valuable community building tool that our vast, busy global society needed. But it has largely failed at facilitating meaningful and valuable interactions. At least as far as I can tell; mostly we're all being self-centered and spending a lot of time maintaining our personal, interactive portraits.
They were also in treacherous waters from the start. Then with a good deal of constant pressure by marketing specialists and companies, they had more to balance and evaluate between the public and the market. Common problem.
I think they should make it a paid product. As is, it is more like television. They are building audiences and getting user data to attract advertisers. This works fairly well. If they forced users to buy access, they would become, I think, more like a venue such as a club, a church, a cafe. They need more interaction between the media, and, though I'm not sure how this should be, but there needs to be some fundamental differences in the form of the site; it is somehow warping and diluting its function. I noticed this immediately when they switched to the status messages being the focal point of the news feed. This was also misleading because we had come to percieve this as the sort of attitude expressing mechanism of the social network. I guess there has been some tweaking of that perception and people are gradually coming to percieve it differently, but it is still definitely lacking.
One upgrade or potential route would be to make it less linear, I think. It needs to have more dimension (depth) to it; it is too superificial at this point. [By the way, if you haven't noticed by this point, I'm thinking out loud here.] So we need to revamp it. It is also another sign of how far the internet has to go still; it is very much premature. It will need to integrate more senses! It needs to be imediately accessible. This page should be closer to my profile, this thoughts log. I need also to be able to have a list of people "nearby" or available to interact with in real-time; as well as some other media to approach; possibly marketing, but also some streaming information coming to me--news and programs to view. News and Entertainment Channels, community groups, discussion updates/forums, and formal & informal messages all need to be better connected. and fuck these lists of text I keep seeing.