The Timelines Facebook Doesn’t Have…
Editor’s note: Facebook timelines are only the beginning. In this guest post, Jim Pitkow and Adrian Aoun sketch out what timelines could look like if they applied to everything. Auon is the CEO of stealth startup Wavii, which is working on a subset of the problems outlined below, and Pitkow is an advisor.
Last week Facebook made history. After collecting data about its users for years, Facebook turned to designer Nicholas Felton who decided it was time to take that data to the next level and visualize it — and the Timeline was born. But what about what’s going on with the rest of the world, and not just my friends… why doesn’t Facebook have timelines for that?
We’ll answer that in a minute, but first, why does it even matter? For the same reason you are reading this article, people like to stay up to date on a wide spectrum of information—social, topical, local, national, global—and we all hate to miss an important new story. With information so readily accessible we feel obligated to process more information than ever before. Facebook is pioneering the way we get information about our friends, but unfortunately, the tools for the rest of the world’s news haven’t yet caught up.
But we’re not telling you anything you don’t already know. The billion-dollar question is what to do about it? We believe that information consumption today is poised for an upheaval—the technology is evolving to match our behavior. So how will this transformation occur?
Battling Information Overload
For example, when Kate Middleton married Prince William, you could read a thousand articles about it. Oddly enough, reading traditional print media is actually more efficient than this, because the story is mentioned only once per paper. In the current state of “overload”, you see the same article tweeted, shared on Facebook, pushed to your RSS feed, etc. And in many cases publishers bend to the perverse incentive of sensationalized headlines to differentiate their cookie-cutter content and drive more clicks. This makes it difficult to avoid bias and understand what’s actually happening, or even know if you’ve already read the story before clicking the headline: e.g., Kate Middleton gets coat of arms, It’s Official, Their Perfect Day.
In this case, the headline was distilled down to just the event, categorizing what’s happening into the actors (i.e., Prince William, Kate Middleton) and the verbs (i.e., married), displayed with a universal icon.
But wait, there’s more… the event is merely an anchor. You can use it to kick-start social discussion, discover related events, and even organize the details (i.e., where was the wedding, who attended, etc.). Over time, all of this information leads to engaging timelines for just about anything you pay attention to in the world.
Implementing the Revolution
Wouldn’t it be great if the rest of the world’s events were just as easy to scan as the events pertaining to your friends?
So why can Facebook do this, and the rest of the world can’t? Simple — users. Every feed item on Facebook is generated by users, whether they realize it or not. Users definitely post their thoughts, locations, etc., but they don’t often write, “I broke up with my boyfriend.” Instead, Facebook elegantly reports this changed profile setting as an update on their feed. Facebook has this data for your friends, but they don’t have it for all the celebrities you care about, the movies, cities, sports teams, politicians, products, and companies.
What does it all mean?
Facebook’s feed keeps you returning daily to find out what’s new, start up a conversation, give your opinion, and more. You would benefit just as much from this being applied to the rest of the web, so let’s do it.
Facebook is reordering your timeline, but what about the world’s timelines?