Remember when Facebook used to be fun? Do you remember how you used to feel before you logged into the site for the day? Do you remember the wonder and excitement of who you might discover? I sure do. I used to love Facebook. Logging in was like going on a treasure hunt. You never knew what you might find. For me, making connections was really what drew me to Facebook. I really enjoyed reuniting with old friends, interacting with them, and seeing what they were up to.
Over the years, however, Facebook went through a number of changes; new features such as the suggestion tool made the process of finding long-lost friends much easier and Facebook’s incredibly fast growth allowed us to make those connections faster than ever. At first, I thought this was great but what I found however, was that the larger my friend list grew, the less accurate that the suggestion tool became and the fewer friends I ended up finding in the future.
This was because the number of people I knew in the real world was limited and friending a new person on Facebook was no different than crossing them off of a list. For me, Facebook was more about making connections than communication and as I started to make fewer connections, Facebook just started to get boring.
Today, Facebook is more of a chore than something fun to do. Instead of feeling like a treasure hunt, checking my Facebook page seems more like checking my email; more like something I have to do than something I want to do. I log in, quickly browse my feed, maybe check out a photo or two and then log off.
So how does Facebook make the site exciting again? Facebook should start by giving us a way to make new and interesting connections with people we don’t already know. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want Facebook to be Twitter, with photos, nor do I want Facebook to become a dating site. Facebook needs to think beyond existing relationships and introduce a way to meet new people that helps build meaningful and positive relationships like we might make in real life.
I don’t pretend to know how this might work but what I do know is this; if Facebook doesn’t do something drastic soon, even the newest members will start to tire of the service. Once that happens, Facebook will start down the path of all the other failed websites.
What do you think? Are you getting bored by Facebook? Let us know how you might fix it.
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