Laura VanVliet is in a Relationship with Facebook and It's Complicated

I am one of the unhip who is still disenchanted with the new layout of Facebook, which was another blow to an already fading flame. Perhaps I appreciated Facebook as a place of personal writing, and not as a place of publishing and marketing, which was, after all, the inevitable path of anything successful on this Internet game.

I am convinced it was easier on older versions of Facebook to stalk your friends. With the newest version, I honestly feel that my status posts become insignificant tweets on the fine print of that right ticker - I am normally shy of posting, and now I feel even more hesitant to accept the more obvious fact that my Facebook statuses don't matter (imagine that!). But I feel the same way for the reverse case. Other authors have cried social overload. I don't think Facebook perfectly distinguishes what would be relevant news to me, and I more often realize that I neglected friends who I wished I paid more attention to -

Wait, isn't that the experience of real life anyway?

Perhaps. But I think the personal social networking site has become a place of networking life farther and farther outside one's social circles, which Facebook now tries to draw for you, by creating optional lists of "Close Friends" and a list for the job you named. I can't sit down and make that address book in such good conscience. I do categorize my "Pittsburgh Friends" and "Michigan Friends" etc., but I don't rank categories or like to give them so explicit a label. I'm too old to name my "best best friend" or my very favorite singer. Or, wait, maybe we DO do that anyway.

But now Facebook will try to network users with fan pages of their favorite singers. authors, companies, etc.. I think it is still the case that Facebook fan pages are usually filled with material copy/pasted from Wikipedia, which seems a strange standard somehow. But an idea has evolved. Rather than listing personal favorites for your friends to read for their benefit, listing personal favorites is a marketing opportunity for everyone involved - for you, for your idol, and especially for Facebook. "Like" on Facebook has become a decision and a verb rather than an affected condition and a noun (as it is literally in other languages like Spanish, Hindi, and a Japanese).

And yet I'm still on Facebook all the time anyway. I still stalk my friends. And I'm subscribing to more fan pages. They got me. I have a friend who left Facebook and he admits feeling isolated. In any case, it is true that more of our social interaction takes place over screen and text than we were first comfortable admitting. I feel that I would go blind without it. But perhaps there are other opportunities available that he's missing. As friends come and go (or linger on my Friends List), and my interests change, what will I become involved with? Will I subscribe to a company or community that will directly affect my life? Professionals check potential employee pages, and more powerful professionals might use or endorse Facebook more for promotion and less for personal interaction. Facebook is still supposed to be a social networking tool - But watch how our social networks evolve and how our marketing networks evolve through Facebook. It's more advertising and it's more than advertising.