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| Unfortunately, this is the only image I can find. This was the search page... |
Tuesday, 19 January 2016
FriendPages... The OLD Facebook
Hello Everyone!
In class today we talked about Web 2.0 (SNSs) audiences, and whether these users are exploited by new media platforms and companies. I am wondering, however, if this is the case only for the platforms that are currently active or SNSs that do most of the work for its users? For instance, I would consider Facebook to be a new media, even though it has been around from a while now, because the platform is continuously changing and "improving" to better facilitate user cooperation and participation in the digital milieu. However, FriendPages was considered THE "social media platform" that most of my peers in grade 7 & 8 used, though, I cannot even find a Wikipedia page about when the website was launched or shut down. The website itself is not even available! The slogan used on the about.me webpage (the only website that mentions this social media platform) characterizes FriendPages as "The social networker's favorite place customize their stories!! Create your own homepage and share photos, links, and more!" As I remember, advertisements were not as intrusive and ubiquitous on the FriendPages platform, yet external websites that provided different coded graphics and links were visited quite often in order to create individual homepages. Below each graphic had explicitly included the website from which it came from; an advertisement for each graphic and design code website that users visited to find and retrieve a given graphic that they first saw on another peer's homepage in order to insert on their own homepage. I wonder if using this social media platform during its time, which was popular and active over thirteen years ago, could have been considered to perpetuate and embody concepts of audience labour theory, such as audience commodity, as explored in this week's reading? Though it may be difficult to determine in relation to obsolete social media platforms, I am wondering if the advancements in technology and the volume of users contributes to conceptualization of audience labour theory in our current day social media platforms.
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Hi Erika! Interesting post! Although I have never used FriendPages, it seems to be similar to MySpace--which I have used. Just like with FriendPages, people had to visit external sites to download "cool" backgrounds for their profile page. When MySpace was popular, there existed a huge variety of websites dedicated to enhancing the look of your profile. Now that MySpace is more or less obsolete, I would image that these websites are, as well. (For example, this site has not been updated for a couple of years, yet is still the top Google hit in my search: http://profilerehab.com/myspace_home). More modern SNS, such as Facebook, do not require profile downloads from outside sites. Everything you need for your profile can be found on the Facebook website, with the exception of pictures and videos you can upload directly to Facebook (conveniently using the Facebook app).
ReplyDeleteI believe this is because large social networking sites discourage users from leaving the page for any reason. In this way, more information can be gathered about a user to be sold to marketing firms for a profit. Image cropping, chatting, liking, even video chatting is all available through Facebook. As the company has progressed, it has slowly added more features--making other programs such as IMS obsolete. Making Facebook a one-stop-shop site has allowed them to bump out competitors. This relates to audience commodity because Facebook is designed specifically for profit (no matter how often Mark Zuckerberg may deny this fact). The way in which Facebook lays out a page, encourages users to interact, and offers multiple communication tools all work towards collecting a large amount of personal data that can be sold. In this way, audience exploitation is top priority, driving Facebook's economic dominance and policy of surveillance.
I remember friends pages! Wish I could look at my old website somehow..
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