Imagine in 2008, a young kid CEO piggybacked on Moore’s law, boldly stating that people will share twice the information online that they do in real life. Every. Single. Year. And ‘his’ Facebook would be the center point of that phenomenon. The bold statement was received with some indulgent smiles. The boldness of young people is easily tolerated – if they are successful. Some journalists were already whetting their knives, surely; so much arrogance had to fall, soon.
But with close to 800 million people connected on Facebook, tirelessly sharing their location, moods, actions, notes and intentions, it looks like Zuckerberg’s Law is well on track. And Mark Zuckerberg did more this week than just give the old Facebook a facelift. He radically redesigned it, inviting the small continent of followers to the next stage. Zuckerberg is turning your old profile page into a timeline. Your life is from now on a well-defined line through time, captured online.
With a click of a button, a conference and some nicely prepared presentations, Facebook positioned itself as the focal point of your online life, the spider in your fragile online ecosystem. It connects to your social Web, your pictures, your news, your mail, your music and your game. With the announced even smoother integration of reading, listening, curating and sharing tools, most of what you think, read, want, view or comment will be linked to, stapled on and associated with your timeline, traced, linked and indexed.
I know, put like that, it sounds scary. But Mark Zuckerberg thinks the world is ready. And I am afraid he is right.