Oversharing apps: Facebook reveals plans to move away from ‘passive posting’

One year after Facebook introduced its first batch of Timeline apps, a company insider reveals that the “passive publishing� approach – which ultimately makes people backseat drivers on their own profiles – will no longer be the site’s focus going forward.

The first-generation apps, which post media-consumption activities on users’ behalf, are the reason News Feeds go beyond status updates and photos to reveal the music friends are listening to, the online articles they’re reading, the videos they’re clicking on, the books they just bought, and so on.

While these automated posts can be wonderful for “word-of-mouse,� they’re also to blame for many users simultaneously embarrassing themselves and nauseating others (does anyone really want to know that their mom “claimed an offer� for lingerie?).

Facebook’s Justin Osofsky said the site plans to work with its partners to ensure that people are indeed “sharing what they want to share, with whom they want to share it.�

“While people have always had the ability to control if an app can start posting to their Timeline, and who can see it, updated versions of the product will make controls even clearer,� said Osofsky, director of platform partnerships for the brand. “It always should be that you’re actively choosing to do something.�

More than 7,000 Timeline apps have launched over the past year, with the average month-over-month growth rate for sharing activity topping 40 per cent.

Facebook user Scott Paterson from Ottawa said seeing these automated posts on friends’ Timelines has helped him land a deal on eye glasses, find money-saving coupons, and feel better acquainted with the people in his online life.

“I don’t think I’m at the point of knowing too much about my friends,� said Paterson, who works in the software industry. “In most cases, I think it’s interesting to see that we have some things in common that I wasn’t aware of.�

Other users, such as Toronto writer Michael Murray, are less pleased with friends’ media consumption habits having crept onto Facebook – arguably turning the site from a conversation medium into a broadcasting platform.

“People are reduced to their constituent elements, becoming an arrangement of pieces rather than a whole,� said  Murray. “It’s tribal, (with) our relations based not on how we get along but by our shared affections.�

The ability to opt out of auto-sharing, or to customize the audience for such posts, does exist. Privacy expert Kashmir Hill said the problem is that most first-generation apps default to transparency, leaving people surprised when the fact they watched a video entitled “Sexy Upskirt Newsbabes� is broadcast to their entire social network.

“A lot of users spend a lot of time figuring out how to undo (automated) sharing. People want to craft their image and really be able to control how they’re perceived; if posts are automatic, there’s no curation,� said Hill.

“I’d rather my friends make conscious decisions about what they want to send my way as opposed to bombarding me with every little thing that’s happening in their lives.�

Affording people with a better sense of authority is one of the site’s mandates for the months ahead. Specifically, Facebook’s Osofsky said they plan to focus on creating app experiences “where the user understands what they’re doing.�

“You could be actively choosing to share every run that you take, or you could actively choose to share just one run,� he cited as an example. “The key thing is that you’re choosing what you want to share.�

mharris@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/popcultini

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