Monday, January 12, 2009

Personal Informatics Post Seven: Facebook Feeds

I'm probably putting this in a bit out of order, but your feed and your friendfeed on Facebook are close kin to the specialty informatics offerings, albeit an extremely public one. But being public is not counter to this phenomenon -- almost the opposite.

While most people don't populate their feeds with EVERY ASPECT of their lives, like they would with a service like Daytum (see post six), the principle of placing such a high level of personal information out there for large number of people to see is, through Facebook, an extremely popular activity.

Again, the feed feature is a rather polarizing offering. I admit that I am in the camp of having total indifference to what you ate today ("Paul is EATING BACON...), but others tell me that this is their favorite part of using the site. It enables those of us who have difficulty keeping up with people a way to have a sense of what they are doing on a daily or even hourly basis.

Was this tendency in all of us before Facebook? Did they really launch the concept? The ability to add updates through mobile, particularly through iPhone apps, is only going to expand the audience of fact exhibitionists.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

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