Facebook Home

Facebook have announced Facebook Home, a UI for the Android operating system. Normally when Facebook announce a new feature, I write a ranty blog post telling everyone why they shouldn't use it (which people usually ignore, at least until the BBC publishes an almost identical article a year later.)

So this time I'm not going to say anything technical at all. My views on the subject are irelevant - I won't be using Facebook Home, and most of my less tech-savvy friends are iPhone users so they can't even if they want to.

What is starting to bug me are Facebook's tech demos. Specifically, the sample data they're using. It's far more interesting than any of my actual friends. For example, check out www.facebook.com/home. It shows off some of the new (er - repackaged) features that you can use with Facebook Home. You can get status updates right on your home screen. Elisabeth Carr wants to tell you "Just finished my first marathon and qualified for Boston!" Nicholas Arioli asks "Finally paid off my student loan, who wants to help me celebrate?". The reality is, of course, that most people (at least most people I know) don't post status updates nearly as interesting - it's usually something along the lines of "OMG, my parcel is late, I took the day off for nothing", "My ex-husband is such a dick" or "Just saw a squirrel piss on a cat LOL."

The sample photos on the demo are fantastic too - Facebook Home allows you to see all your friends' photos on your home screen as they're shared. Look at Amanda Johnston's beautiful photo of Lake Tahoe. Look at Will Bailey's fabulously arty photo of his lone tent in a corn field. The reality is, of course, that the photos will probably be of your mate Dave passed out on the floor of a toilet cubicle. Or your old high-school friend Lauren (who you never really spoke to anyway) and her 50th photo of her kid today. Perhaps an over-saturated photo of some sushi, or, if you're really lucky, a photo of the aforementioned squirrel pissing on a cat.

The simple fact is that most people are fucking boring. It's not their fault, each to their own. But continual connection to everyone else is a bad thing, not a good thing. If my friends did continually post photos of their skydiving trips, or their camping expeditions in beautiful places, or wrote about interesting things, then I'd have much more time for Facebook and social networking in general. I can only imagine that the sample data is based on Mark Zuckerberg's naive assumption of what having any friends is actually like. Maybe there's a niche market here - I should start a service that actually fills your Facebook feed with interesting (if completely fictional) things, so you can pretend your friends' mundane life experiences are actually worth reading about.

I'm going to stop ranting now, if you'd like more information about Facebook, please consult the great Oatmeal.