You Can’t Do Facebook “Differently”

Different Facebook - The Anti-Social MediaIn my day job, where I get paid to be nice and talk with people on Facebook, I look at a lot of Facebook pages. Pages for brands, pages for local businesses, pages for your cat. Eventually, they all start to blend in to the same nonsense of likes, wall posts, and apps.

That’s why it drives me nuts when people say they are going to do Facebook in a different way.

What is there to do differently?

Let’s face it, the news feed is the core of the Facebook experience, and it only allows text, images, and video to reach users. While you have complete freedom over the content in that news feed, there is little to do things differently.  You can’t add in a game there. You can’t even drop in a podcast. That’s just the way Facebook is.

The biggest area to do something different is with creativity. The information offered, the apps you promote, and the images you share, which hobo from the street you let be your admin and community manager. While those actions are the start of doing something, whether that something is different, who knows.

Can we really use social networks “differently” than how they were intended? Or are we limited but he functionalities that the creators have built for us?

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2 Responses to “You Can’t Do Facebook “Differently””

  1. Aaron Eden August 17, 2011 at 6:44 am #

    I’m also laughing… just how do you do Facebook differently? It’s quite tough to tell which people will convert into buying customers by simply looking at Likes. Just because someone liked your post doesn’t mean they like what you sell. But I have to agree with you on creativity, especially with Facebook’s edge rank. Do you think people are simply bored with Facebook these days?

    • Jay August 17, 2011 at 10:41 am #

      I’m bored with everything these days that happen on the internet. Except for this site.