you killed facebook
August 11th, 2008 • scenes from the web
The arrival of the London theatre and comedy scene to Edinburgh has pretty much broken facebook - only the brave or foolhardy sign in to brave the onslaught of e-fliers, invitations and group invites to plays, comedies, launches and 2-for-1 promos for plays by friends of friends of friends.
At the best of times, the ease of inviting just about everyone you know to anything at all means that facebook’s social network has had a fairly large noise-to-signal ratio: right now, it’s all noise. Even with free WiFi access across many (if not most of) the venues across the city, I’ve spoken to several people who’ve abandoned the site entirely until the end of the festival - falling back on older, more reliable (face to face) networks to rediscover their personal signal. Few, though, have ever mentioned a cull of the friends of friends of friends that produced the avalanche of largely unwanted content in the first place.
