Megan West(erby)

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For Smith, it is the gravest of sins that Facebook allows us to share our likes with each other because it leads us down a path of homogenization. And the next thing you know, “500 million connected people all decide to watch the reality-TV show Bride Wars because their friends are.” And yeah, if you’re judging all of Facebook based on a tiny slice of the world, it can seem like everyone starts to do something all at once. For instance, last night, everyone was talking about Walking Dead, the new AMC show. But I know that I am part of a very small niche that was interested in Walking Dead. Of the 350 million people in the United States, 5.3 million people watched the premiere last week. Now, take the other things that I pay attention to: algorithms, open government, solar panels. Sometimes mini-trends sweep through my Twitter feeds specific to those topics, but then they are replaced. At best, only a few dozen of the people I interact with online are interested in any one story or event.

To put a finer point on it: I would just ask, is Facebook the engine of homogenization? Do we live in an era where everyone reads, watches, and listens to the same things? Of course not! We live in the time of the hyperniche. All this liking and information spreading has led us to build more paths that are all less taken. Consider that you could capture a majority of the households in the United States on a given night by advertising on the Big 3 networks. And Facebook is to blame for a culture in which everyone watches the same thing?

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Literary Writers and Social Media: A Response to Zadie Smith - Alexis Madrigal - Technology - The Atlantic

Perfect.

9 November 2010 ·