Tuesday, March 17, 2009

What's on your mind?



The Facebook makeover successfully manages to keep social networking in the news and even in the papers! I’ve recently been thinking about the Twitter prompt, what are you doing, and the particular challenges of working in the 140 character economy. Some people do take the what are you doing prompt seriously, but most of those I’m following make no concession at all to this, unless you count some of the weird things they say, their twitpics, and the urls as kinds of doing. On the other hand the 140 characters is standard, and I’ve been intrigued by the reflective subtleties than can be shoehorned into that form. So maybe the prompt is irrelevant. Facebook, amongst other changes, have altered their prompt so it now asks what’s on your mind. A bit like a counsellor, who’s always there each day, or how often you go to the site, with the same persistent curiosity. What’s on your mind? Does this change the Facebook environment from being an action-orientated account of people’s lives and parties into a more introspective or even reflective space? Somehow I don’t think so. But then it all depends on what you have in mind.

No comments: