By Chris O’Brien, San Jose Mercury News –
When Facebook first announced an ambitious initiative last September to induce us to share even more stuff on the social network, I was pretty enthusiastic. While many people fret about oversharing and privacy, I’m more than happy to have every tidbit of my digital life channeled through Facebook.
Several months later, however, I’ve changed my mind about so-called “frictionless sharing.” Not only has it made my use of Facebook more complicated and more frustrating, but I think the argument can be made that it threatens the foundation of the social network’s business model.
Though Facebook continues to expand the service and the number of applications that run on it, I think the company would be well-served by hitting the pause button and seriously rethinking the pitfalls of a service that makes sharing too easy.
Let me start by giving you a personal example.
My first use of “frictionless sharing” came through Spotify. To join the social music service, I created an account using my Facebook login information. Now, when I listen to a song on Spotify, it automatically feeds directly into my Facebook profile, where friends will see it on their news feeds.
It’s important to note how this is new. Years ago, the only way to share information on Facebook was to copy a link into a box or upload something directly and then hit “post.” Then, sharing evolved with the introduction of the so-called “open graph,” which allowed websites to include “like” or “recommend” buttons that shared content back to Facebook without you having to visit.
Now we have what’s been called “frictionless sharing.” There are no buttons to click, no links to copy. If you are logged into a service with your Facebook account that allows frictionless sharing, each time you read a news story, visit a website or listen to a song, your activity flows right into Facebook.
When I saw this with Spotify last summer, I was thrilled. I’m a huge music fan, and the ease with which I could share every song I heard felt awesome. At the same time, I loved being able to see what friends were playing as they played it. Even better, I could now click on a button on Facebook that let me listen along with them.
The problems began a couple of months later. My kids at home were listening to Spotify using my account, which automatically shared their tunes with my Facebook friends. While at work, my Facebook page would record that I was listening to all sorts of kids’ music, or appalling selections from the likes of Justin Bieber. Friends would post snarky comments mocking me for my lame musical taste.
Now, if this seems like a minor annoyance, think about this: How many people have access to your Facebook login information? How many people do you let post on your Facebook account? Zero. You just don’t do it because Facebook is supposed to be all about you.
Essentially, I had handed my kids the keys to my Facebook account.
OK, by now you might be thinking, “Hey, dummy! Just turn it off!” And you’d have a point. Except in recent months, Facebook has expanded the ability of other apps to allow frictionless sharing.
Managing the sharing options on each app becomes a major headache. I have to check all those other apps, and even sites like Yahoo that allow frictionless sharing, to make sure I’m logged out. Otherwise, all my family’s digital activity might suddenly be filling my Facebook profile.
A pain for me, but from the perspective of Facebook, this is also bad. The reason I’ve always believed Facebook will be a monster business over time is that it is gathering an unprecedented amount of personal information about me that I am only too happy to share — though I understand many are not. What makes this so powerful — and, yes, terrifying to some people — is its purity: It is about me, and no one else.
With frictionless sharing, Facebook’s pure image of me is becoming more polluted by other people’s interests. And it’s already having an impact.
My son, who is 9, practices a Brazilian martial art called capoeira. He loves to listen to capoeira music on Spotify, which of course makes its way into my Facebook account. The result: I’m now served ads for capoeira clothing and music and videos. Stuff that is personally irrelevant to me.
This should make Facebook very, very nervous.
Now that it has more than 900 million active users, it’s counting on them to share more stuff to fuel Facebook’s growth. But also that supercharged sharing could taint its perception of you, which would make its ads less effective and less profitable.
Malorie Lucich, a Facebook spokeswoman, said the company is aware of the issue and continues to refine the way its platform works. And it is trying to educate developers of applications to make it easier for users to control their sharing, and to switch it off.
“Our job as a platform is to distribute high-quality apps that people enjoy,” Lucich said. “It’s the developers’ job to make them high quality.”
Brian Solis, an analyst at Altimeter Group and author of “The End of Business as Usual,” agreed that the initial implementation and design of these apps was flawed, but not the concept of frictionless sharing. He noted that Facebook has a history of pushing against our comfort zone in terms of the amount we share and how we do it.
“We’re learning how to use this as human beings,” Solis said. “There’s nothing like this that our parents had to deal with. The ‘frictionless sharing’ platform is quite brilliant. They’re making us think and behave differently and they’re betting we’ll adjust and get more comfortable with it.”
Perhaps he’s right. For now, I’ve disabled all the frictionless sharing features on Facebook apps that I use. Maybe it’s indeed inevitable we’ll all embrace it, but for now I’m content to stay in the sharing slow lane until the kinks are worked out.
