Really?
I guess I'd make a terrible FB/Google/Twitter/Whatever employee. I understand that yes it's cool and communication is faster and easier than before, but - seriously - is it really world-changing?
The discovery of agriculture, the advent of organized religion, the dissolution of organized religion, the idea of self-determination, the harnessing of electricity - these things changed the world.
But adding a single feature to a single website - really? Would someone who was cryogenically frozen just before FB video was put online, and then was unfrozen after, be able to comprehend the world they were living in? Do the same thought experiment with organized religion.
"But people were skeptical of other world-changing technology or ideology at the time, too." Yes. You're right. And I'm skeptical now. Doesn't make me wrong.
I understand that they're in California and that it's apparently fashionable to imitate Jobs-like megalomaniacal optimism about one's own importance. I understand that self-motivation requires them to believe that what they do is the highest cause, and that it's important for one's career to appear to be a Jihad on behalf of the employer.
And don't get me wrong, FB is a great website and a really useful one which I use regularly to find people. But can we please agree that it's not world-changing. Here's what's great: it doesn't have to be. You do not need to be a hero. If your code doesn't change the world, that does not diminish you (if you never have a true, deep human friendship - that diminishes you).
I get the feeling that so-called social media is often largely insular media. People get their circle of friends and associates, and that becomes their whole world, which in turn becomes the whole world.
There are people who believe that if they put something on Twitter or FB then they've announced something to the world, and now everybody knows. The idea that vast numbers of people are not only not on one or anther social media tool, but simply do not give a rat's ass, is a completely alien concept.
You're right - and I'm afraid it might be even worse than that.
A world built of online "contacts" rather than real life relationships is a shallow one at best. So 10,000 people watched my video, and 1000 of them became my friends. How many of those will console me when I lose a parent? And if they won't - then why am I spending time on them?
One justification is that it's the "whole world." In other words, it's important. Maybe it doesn't mean anything - but it's "very important".
I just hope a whole generation of people (myself included) don't wake up one day to discover that we have no real social ties, no firm bedrock on which to anchor identities and lives in the real world.
Adding video to web experience is becoming commoditized. To change to the world (for better or worse) means working on launching the next big thing -- which in turn will be commoditized.
But, last I heard, Google is yet to make money off Youtube. Facebook may be finding that video can be an value-adding supplement to its business, not just a bandwidth-sucking enticement to the lowest-common-denominator of the masses. [ "not that there's anything wrong with the latter" - it just doesn't seem to make for a profit center, even for Google.]
