The Facebook experiment has failed
People <i>really</i> just don't seem to understand that experiences with social media are specific to the individual. I guess it's understandable. I see the same Google Maps as everyone else does. I see the same Hacker News as everyone else who visits HN.<p>But Facebook isn't like that. Your Facebook timeline is based entirely on <i>your</i> friends and how <i>you</i> interact with Facebook.<p>And so, every few weeks it seems, we get these posts from some techie who believes that his (it's always a man) experiences with social media are universal.<p>It just ain't so. This may be a pat little summary of why using Facebook is unrewarding for the author, but to generalize that to a "failed" experiment for everyone, would require talking to other humans about how they experience Facebook — i.e., doing actual research. (Even then, the conclusion would only hold, at best, for the types of humans with whom the author has spoken.) And as usual for these rants, there's no evidence this research has been done.<p>This piece of writing, therefore, does not contribute meaningfully to the discussion around Facebook.