The evolving social network: How Facebook feed reflects our lives

I was first exposed to a social network (online one) in 2006. That was Orkut. Soon registered on Facebook too. Experimented with a few other wannabes like relianceadda, yaari etc. But finally Facebook it was. Reason to use it were many including the fact that most of my friends found it easier to use, it had limited picture restrictions, easier and effective privacy controls.

I joined Facebook in 2006 and for a while it was just any other social network. A year later, it was the only one I was using. I stopped using Orkut in 2007. I went back to it when it put a couple of games. But they did not hold me there for long. Facebook’s interface was clearly the best. And it kept bringing in games and other features as well. Mafia wars, farmville, crazy taxi, pocket tanks etc. These days I do not use Facebook for games. Only as a photo sharing and sometimes online article sharing site.

Over the years I have observed patterns in the content that people have shared and published. It started with photos and pictures about the colleges that people were in and how proud were they to be in those colleges. They shared pictures, posts, comments about campuses, hostel life, love affairs, college festivals, celebrations, academics and other similar things. People wrote about the forests, rains, weather, city life and what they thought about them.

Then it was about internships, European tours, birthday parties, jungle trips, beach visits, road trips and few adventurous sagas chipped in. This was also the time of late-teen angst setting in. Some people wrote what they felt about the other gender. Some wrote about what they felt about their own gender. Girls did the second one more often. A few took to some social issues and became (tried to at least) small time social crusaders. They posted their opinions, justifications, passions and pictures and what they felt about those pictures, passions, opinions, justification and what others should feel about those pictures, passions, opinions and justifications.  

These posts, of course, followed a pattern of their own. Birthdays were posted year round and internships were a post-summer phenomenon. The first few were exciting and then it became quite boring. The very same European/American cities, locales, roads, trains and monuments were posted year after year and in album after album. Something similar happened to Indian beaches and cities. And some very well frequented bars and pubs (there are very few anyway). Even album names followed a predictable trend. ‘A trip to...’ ‘memorable summer in..’ ‘holiday with family in...’ ‘America!!...’ ‘Eurotrip...’ were some common themes running across the album names. I guess I have seen so much of them, that the next time I am visiting any of these places, I will probably have no difficulty getting my way around. This happened to me in Bangalore. I guess this will definitely happen in future.

Soon we moved towards our final year at college and convocation pictures and farewell parties followed. Almost everyone was posting about them and talking about them. By this time Facebook introduced cover picture. Most of my friends had graduation pictures as their cover pictures. A month later it was the first job. This pattern was not something limited to my batch mates. I saw this for my seniors and I see this for my juniors now. But since I know no juniors beyond 4 years junior, I guess I will move out of that ‘bubble’ soon. As in 4 years from now, I might not be knowing any juniors from IIT Madras and hence won’t see any of those pictures anymore.

These days, it is marriage pictures that often pop on my feed. Most of my seniors are getting married. My batch mates will start moving into that ‘bubble’ soon. These were infrequent earlier, probably one or two every marriage season. But the pace has picked up in last one year. It will peak as soon as my batch mates marry. And then as last of juniors get married, this bubble too would be over.

Without any brain wracking, I can say that soon babies will follow. People will share baby caring tips and what not. Our walls will be overflowing with cute baby pictures, as they were once overflowing with internships, Eurotrips, birthdays etc. Soon babies will grow big. More pictures. And then admissions to school, search for homes, jobs etc. Thus, I guess, my Facebook feed will evolve. But how long will facebook stay around to keep track of all these changes?

These changes will generate large amounts of data for sure. And any social network will have to evolve in order to provide features that enable and enrich sharing and celebrating such content. Facebook was planned and designed primarily as a networking tool for college crowd. It has evolved way beyond that but most of its basic features still reflect that. As demographics in the core markets change and shift, it will have to provide features to reflect the needs of that demographic (especially first generation adopters who have grown with the Facebook). Mark Zuckerberg is married and I think he might have undergone a similar change and I think he knows what should Facebook do.