Business Insight Zone

(If you’re interested in a little rant on social media and its portrayal by other media, read on. Otherwise, please stand by for other programming.)

The title of this post might not quite — quite — be fair to Tom Hodgkinson’s arrant Guardian profile of Facebook, but it’s not far off, either. His question-begging begins right from the off:

I despise Facebook. This enormously successful American business describes itself as “a social utility that connects you with the people around you”. But hang on. Why on God’s earth would I need a computer to connect with the people around me? Why should my relationships be mediated through the imagination of a bunch of supergeeks in California? What was wrong with the pub?

And does Facebook really connect people? Doesn’t it rather disconnect us, since instead of doing something enjoyable such as talking and eating and dancing and drinking with my friends, I am merely sending them little ungrammatical notes and amusing photos in cyberspace, while chained to my desk? A friend of mine recently told me that he had spent a Saturday night at home alone on Facebook, drinking at his desk. What a gloomy image. Far from connecting us, Facebook actually isolates us at our workstations.

Thus does Hodgkinson make assertions and ask questions, posed as rhetorical, that actually deserve answers grounded in fact. Very clearly there are plenty of people who want (let’s forget “need”) to connect with others using a computer. This includes people who are not notable for antisocial behavior, gloominess of life, or, for that matter, shoddy grammar.

May I use myself as an example? This afternoon I had a lovely conversation with an industry colleague — a woman I would not have met without Twitter. (The vector easily could have been Facebook instead.) Our conversation took place via Twitter and e-mail. She’s “around me” in the sense that we work on some of the same issues and share many of the same concerns — but it required technological mediation for us to meet one another, because we live half a continent apart. If Hodgkinson doesn’t think this is an adequate basis for a human relationship . . . well, his view makes him a poor reporter on the subject, since millions of people — not automatons, but people — clearly do find it adequate. He would be better served to report on that phenomenon than to rant about it in mock-Thoreauvian tones.

Mind you, the piece is interesting to read for its dissection of the libertarian / neoconservative politics of Facebook board member and eminence gris Peter Thiel. Hodgkinson has convinced me of Thiel’s personal unpleasantness, even if he hasn’t come close to nailing down his thesis that Thiel’s politics deeply color Facebook’s business strategy — a strategy that Hodgkinson paints as craven, marketing-driven, dehumanizing, and, best I can tell, subversive to the modern order of nation-states.

Before I go on, I should also note that I find Facebook — the product, not the company — a bit tedious. It is junked up with advertisements, which I avoid not because they’re all too good at targeting me (which Hodgkinson seems to fear), but because they’re irrelevant to me.

My printout of the article is covered with marginal notes, but I’ll share just a few specific problems:

• Of Facebook’s user base: “That’s 59 million suckers, all of whom have volunteered their ID card information and consumer preferences to an American business they know nothing about.” Not so. Again, I’ll take myself for an example: Facebook “knows” where I went to school, where I live now, and who some of my friends are. Yet it doesn’t know, for instance, my year of birth, where I go to church (or if I do), or the name of even one brand of consumer product that I like. Why? Because I didn’t tell it. The information a user must enter into Facebook is sketchy; as for the rest, caveat emptor would seem to cover it.
• Hodgkinson writes, “Some net nerds have suggested that its $15bn valuation is excessive, but I would argue that if anything that is too modest.” Now, probably he’s not talking about me, but it’s worth noting that he doesn’t actually back up his argument. Instead, he uses two data points (an investment from Microsoft and the rumor of an investment from Hutchison Whampoa chief Li Ka-shing) to form the guess that Facebook is worth more than $15 billion.
• The valuation argument comes right after this gem: “Now even if you don’t buy the idea that Facebook is some kind of extension of the American imperialist programme crossed with a massive information- gathering tool, there is no way of denying that as a business, it is pure mega-genius.” I can’t recall the last time I encountered such a backhanded compliment framed with such an ideologically overloaded introductory clause.
• The ideology I can deal with; you read the Guardian understanding that it is one of the most liberal major newspapers in the English-speaking world. What I can’t tolerate is Hodgkinson’s ignorance about the workings of social media. He writes, “Facebook is profoundly uncreative. It makes nothing at all. It simply mediates in relationships that were happening anyway.” This reveals just how badly Hodgkinson misunderstands social media. Facebook might not be the most innovative social networking tool that exists, but clearly it does do more than mediate pre-existing relationships. Many people meet via Facebook (recall my earlier point about my Twitter-friend; I’ve met people on Facebook, too), and many people interact differently via Facebook than they do through other vectors.

Enough. Hodgkinson’s is a haphazard piece that can’t decide whether it’s an expose of Thiel’s non-wrongdoings (in which case, who cares?) or a critique of the social media as a whole (in which case it’s simply ignorant).

My friend Jon Lebkowsky, who knows from online community, had this to say in his reaction to Hodgkinson’s article:

Like any online community, Facebook will become what its users make it, regardless of the plans of Thiel et al. We’re only susceptible to commercialization a la television if that’s what we accept, just as we only get the governments we deserve. I’m glad Hodgkinson’s given us this background info to ponder, but it doesn’t worry me. We get the communities we accept; we get the governments we deserve. If we don’t make the effort to be better citizens, better community members, better people, that’s our fault, and not the fault of some manipulative bunch of neoconservatives.

Keep in mind that Facebook itself is quite capable of its own fluff and nonsense. To my eyes, its wunderkind CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, pulled off that trick in his 60 Minutes interview this week. For a video clip of that interview and a clear-headed analysis of the issues it raised, I commend to you this item from Charlene Li, a Forrester analyst who was quoted in the 60 Minutes segment:

Facebook recap from 60 Minutes

Unlike Mr. Hodgkinson, Ms. Li has the signal distinction of knowing what the heck she’s talking about when it comes to social media.

Category: Internet, Media