Facebook emerging as the main vehicle of government 2.0?

Facebook offered a great way to connect people and enabled them to communicate quite efficiently. As such, it is slowly becoming a very important tool in politics. The way Barack Obama primarily used it (i.e. to communicate with the electorate) was just the beginning. 

Thanks to the ease of spreading what you have to say and gaining supporters in just a few clicks, we see and are going to see Facebook used as a hub for political movements that were too weak to gain attention among their potential followers in pre-Facebook days. Moreover, it has never been so fast and easy to coordinate activities, vote and present outcomes to the general public on a massive scale.

This is how you do it

Over 15,000 individuals "from Facebook" signed a virtual petition for the new controversial Czech National Library by supporting it on Facebook. Furthermore, they used Facebook to coordinate a manifestation. This was the first time I've heard about Facebook in Czech media, who rather clumsily treated the Facebook community as almost homogenous "people from Facebook".

The Causes application looks like it was created just to make people's voice heard and is likely to play a role in the future. Wanna "Make St.George's Day a Bank Holiday in England" - fine, join the cause, like over 500,000 individuals did! How long would it normally take to get 500,000 signatures on a petition? Would it be even worth it? This is a massive public force forming here...

... and some people are sure to abuse it. This specific cause entry created by English Democrats looks more like being focused on collecting donations than supporting the cause.

What I'm trying to say is that Facebook is a potential source or rather a vehicle of tremendous power and let's hope it's going to be used in a way beneficial for everyone.

The Facebook "plague"

When I joined Facebook in autumn 2006, it was just pioneering in the Czech Republic, but it was already obvious that it's spreading throughout the world like a "plague". I avoided it at first, because I'm not into everything that masses like and I also feared that my personal data could be abused. It was curiosity, friends from abroad and a spark of exclusivity that Facebook had at that time at least in my region that brought me there.

Come to the dark side

After I joined, I was really happy about all the fancy capabilities and I did my best to make my actual friends to sing up, so that I could start really using them. I became a Facebook advocate, fully aware of the "plague" I'm spreading, but it just seemed so beneficial for everyone. And so within a year, most of my friends did sing up, even the hardcore sceptics. They had no choice, when all the events and photos were on Facebook. They could choose - either to sign up or to be an outsider.

With my friends list reaching 100, it was becoming obvious that my "addiction" to reading newsfeeds about friends is not very sustainable. I had to start filtering and choosing to "see less information about these persons". I turned off the chat a short time after it was introduced. My growing friends list has another disadvantage - I'm loosing control of who can see what information about me.

I'm not adding anyone anymore and I almost stopped advocating Facebook - there are almost none of my actual friends left, who do not have accounts and there is no more need to advocate it, the movement is already there, the pressure on outsiders to join is already there, "the plague" is unavoidable. 250000 individuals sign up every day (link in Czech). I'm getting friends requests from people whom I actually don't want to have in my friends list, but I don't want to offend anyone, I want to "maintain good relationships" with them.

A service shaped for the served (or?)

The need of more control is growing and I know that I'm not the only one who has it. WHY DOES EVERYONE HAVE TO BE A FRIEND when they are actually not friends, they are just acquintances that I want to keep in contact with. WHY ARE THERE NO FRIEND GROUPS/LEVELS?

Facebook is not a mere internet service anymore, it has become a norm, it is changing the society in a HUGE way, that's what we can all agree upon. "I know you from Facebook" is becoming a common phrase. The concrete effects on society are yet to be studied, uncertainty is present. Even the EU commission realized that there is something happenig and warns that Facebook can be dangerous (link in Czech), because young people are sharing huge amounts of personal information without seeing the risks. How many times have YOU revised the information you share on your profile and your privacy settings?

Although it might sound like it, I'm not against Facebook now nor did I ceased to use it. Actually I use it more than I would like to... it's now my homepage. The question is, is it only the society that has to change, or should Facebook do a better job in fitting the society?! 

If my post got you thinking and you want some more impulses for your ideas, see a very interesting related article "Alone among friends" from Sueddeutsche Zeitung analyzing Facebook psychologically and sociologically (in German).

New world marketing @ Nokia Ideas Project

Nokia recently launched a website called Ideas Project. It is a virtual room for sharing (BIG) ideas, responding to them and elaborating on them. Surprisingly, these do not have to be related to mobile communication in any way.

To speed up the launch of this website, Nokia invited a couple of visionaries to present various ideas. Some of them are really interesting and inspiring, I recommend browsing the site. An example of what dragged my attention are Jerry Michalski's ideas on marketing and social media:

In the new world, he says, you develop your product with your audience from the start and if you actually have to spend any money on advertising, maybe there's something wrong. Well, very provocative, indeed. Reminds me of Apple. But I'd not underestimate the role of advertising as not everyone is engaged on-line and not all product categories  have the ability of creating a global hype like consumer electronics.

One may argue, why did Nokia launch such website? Did they do it, so that they can be part of the on-line massive collaboration trend shaping the future and thus part of the future as well? Looking at the user submitted ideas signals rather a new channel for harvesting ideas on Nokia's products and services. But if it's just a mere new channel, why making it so blurry and unintegrated with other listening channels?