Facebook isn’t broken, I’m just not interesting
I’ve been mulling over why the seemingly endless stream of people stepping up to tell me Facebook, Twitter or whatever network is “broken” because all they see are uninteresting updates and that they’re somehow the fault of the network algorithm.
I use Facebook a lot these days but I’ve tailored it to match up with what I’m currently passionate about (that’s distance running by the way) and I interact with a varied group of new friends who are also interested in that.
The downside for some of my older friends who I don’t see much these days is that I’ve become a total bore. My timeline is full of run reports, discussion about upcoming races and so on.
I suspect most people who think Facebook is broken have a similar story about their close friends. They’re using it wrong. My life and the status updates I share aren’t a whirl of glamorous updates, they’re pretty mundane. Nobody is that interesting, even a startup founder who’s off doing extreme bungee skiing from a helicopter every week ultimately loses his interest to followers.
The trick then is to appreciate that Facebook is a tool for the here and now. Sure, I’m friends with my friends, but I actually don’t follow all of their updates. That’s the trick, they’re often about as interesting as me, some of them have different hobbies and interests and post about them all the time. If they’re boring, simply unfollow the updates. It’s nothing personal and it’s actually how the system works.
I’m still a friend, I’m still up for a pub lunch to catch up but just like you think Facebook is broken because all it’s showing you is that I’m a total bore it’s actually just reminding you that sometimes a constant stream of updates simply aren’t interesting and that’s about as far from broken as you can get.
