The Next Facebook: Has Facebook Accidentally Designed its Successor?

With the latest Facebook iteration looking to grab a piece of the Twitter pie, has it inadvertently created the blueprint for its successor?

Facebook, love it or hate it, over the course of a few years has become a formidable network of social utility. I like many other college students and recent grads know its evolution intimately. We experienced it first hand move from its early days as a series of small college based networks- islands really- to the open sprawl it is today. However despite its near indespensable nature in terms of social management for so many, its most recent iteration may be the architect of it’s demise.

I don’t want to seem reactionary or averse to change. Afterall, this isn’t the first time Facebook as changed much to the chagrin of many of its users. I more than welcomed some of even the more drastic of Facebook’s modifications. It is just that in this case in particular the change aims to modify the very DNA the site and most of what is built upon it is based on.

That foundation is the “real” personal relationship. From the beginning, Facebook contrasted itself from the pack by being based on actual connections with people; your friends, your co-workers and classmates, etc. This destinction diminished the relevance of the “friend count” since each persons criteria for friendship was different. Interactions with those within your network existed on statified levels of intimacy and privacy, from the very public, to one-on-one conversations. Yet with the recent Twitter-like changes, the emphasis is now placed on a collective stream on consciousness, not on intimacy.

No longer does event management or profile information rank high on the list of Facebook uses and priorities. Now the priority relies on the status update, a feature that due to ingrained Facebook user psychology rarely provides much of any real utility. This is where Facebook creates its own Achilles heel, making the most inconsequential of its features the hingepin. Because staus updates were created when Facebook had a much more private feel, the psychology behind what to say never evolved to motivate one to say something interesting or userful to other people.  Whereas Twitter’s lazer-like dedication to this sole feature creates an environment where “good” and “bad” users are defined by they quality of their updates.

Twitter is less personal by nature, but becomes so because the relationships are based on the content. You surround yourself with a group you share spheres of interest with. Facebook isn’t designed around content based relationships, but actually personally connections. So the problem arises when these two worlds collide, “My interests are not met exclusively by the people I physically know” or “My classmates, friends and coworkers are not my sole ‘interest-keepers’”. So with Facebook leaving the niche it helped the create, has it somewhat left a schematic for what will end up making it obsolete? The answer is yes.

The Facebook successor will enter the spot Facebook left and pick up the torch for the personal social network. It will have in some form many of the features below.

• Updates will be tagged. A status update or post about an art exhibit will be tagged differently from an update about you taking a dump. This would allow for filtration, and also allow for some to specify themselves as being accessible/of interest to a certain group of people.
• It will be designed from inception to focus on the small circle of people, instead of the big picture. Probably requiring categorization of users before you friend them, where your relationship with the person determines the presentation (like a classmate will be presented in one sphere, a person you don’t know that you share an interest with will exist in another). This also can add a level of exclusivity on some levels, and the discovery of new people on the other.
• User-customizable info presentation. The experience from the outside world to your profile will be uniform, but your view logged-in would be customizable to fit your needs. In other words, you would for instance be able to have the homepage prominently feature photo posts, or events, or certain friends. The site would remember your configuration, and allow you to change the cosmetic look of your personal logged-in experience while keeping things uniform for everyone else. This simultaneously merges the advantages of  the strict visual experience of Facebook, and the freedoms of Myspace without creating a mess.

Facebook may not change back to its initial focus on the personal, but is someone waiting the take the reins to the market they are leaving behind. What do you think the future holds for the social network?