Nothing more needs to be said about the screen presence of this guy (although how could the camerawork be so unprofessional?). He created social networking software that allowed him to be incredibly popular and have millions of friends without ever having to interact with them face to face. Plus he is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay richer than anyone making jokes about him.
Still, that doesn’t stop his comments being waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off the mark. I might analyse them one at a time, just so you know where we are up to.
(“When people have control over what they share, they’re comfortable sharing more.”)
Zuckerberg is quite far off the mark, as Boyd suggests that people felt very vulnerable upon realising that all their data was accessible (2008, 14), and took dramatic steps to hide a lot of that information (2008, 16). Given control, people significantly exert that control because they feel exposed. The control does not create an environment in which people feel safe and comfortable to share more information, rather, it is seen as protection against the danger and hostilities present on the web.
(“When people share more, the world becomes more open and connected.”)
Even though people are shown (above) not to share more, credit should be given to Zuckerberg for pursuing his goal of “helping people share information more efficiently” (Boyd, 2008, 18). Indeed, while all this information was already publicly available if people only cared to look (Boyd, 2008, 14), it was the fact that they had to really work to discover the information that was hindrance to productivity. If the information is converted to a form which is more efficiently accessible, the world of information is “more open” because there is less time and energy spent navigating so many windows to find the information, and “more connected” because everything is linked to the one centralized hub.
(“And in a more open world, many of the bigger problems we face together will be easier to solve.”)
However, a study conducted by social media analysts The Gilbane Group found that 60% of business’ did not find RSS feeds (such as Facebook’s “Newsfeed”) very effective tools for increasing both marketing nor internal communication required for collaborative projects within the business (Bock and Paxhia, 2008, 7). This data suggests that information sharing in this form does not, in fact, increase openness and connectivity.
Zuckerberg’s final statement is ambitious at best, especially when he provides no evidence of successful collaborations, or what these “bigger problems” might be and how information sharing will help. Bock and Paxhia conclude that “sharing information often does little to solve the underlying issues”, and perhaps the information overload created by this sharing impacts negatively on productivity (2008, 121).
That being said, considering how entended communities are these days, how far spread people are, and how constantly mobile they are (Solove, 2007, 32), perhaps this is at least a small step in increasing communication with people who are otherwise unreachable.
Still, Zuckerberg’s justification for the Newsfeed application is proved to be false and ineffective reasoning, as proved above. But I guess this doesn’t stop Facebook being popular.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Boyd, D. “Facebook’s Privacy Trainwreck: Exposure, Invasion and Social Convergence”, Convergence: The International Journal into New Media Technologies Vol. 14, No. 4. (2008). 13-20
Bock, G. and Paxhia, S. “Collaboration and Social Media-2008: Taking Stock of Today’s Experiences and Tomorrow’s Opportunities”, Research Report. The Gilbane Group. (2008) 1-132
Solove, D.J. “How the free flow of information liberates and constrains us”, The Future of Reputation: Gossip, rumour and privacy on the Internet. New Haven: Yale University Press. (2007) 17-49
Week 5: Analyse critically the following statement by Mark Zuckerberg while comparing it to privacy issues raised by online social networking collaborative practices: (Start at 0.26 end at 0.39) “When people have control over what they share, they’re comfortable sharing more. When people share more, the world becomes more open and connected. And in a more open world, many of the bigger problems we face together will be easier to solve.”
jarrydbendall 