[freshfunk]

Fear Uncertainty Doubt

In the beginning, Facebook was, to some extent, private. I'm thinking back to the days when they were rolled out college by college. Even after then, mostly people of a certain generation were on FB.

Since then, their reach has gone global and it reached the late adopters: parent, grandparents, uncles and aunts. As that circle became larger, Facebook felt less private.

What the article seems to have missed is that the popularity around other sharing models is actually relatively new. 1-1 messaging, at least on mobile, really only got huge within the last 2-4 years. How old is Snapchat? < 3 years? And it's been mainstream-ish for less than that. Secret, Whisper, Kik... all of these apps with different sharing models are a pretty recent phenomenon.

It seems pretty silly to call this an "about face" considering the span of time considered. Opinions always evolve over time. Look at Steve Jobs: Famously known for saying that Apple would "never" make a tablet smaller than the original iPad. Lo and behold, they did.

Products and the philosophy around them change over time, especially in an area like tech which is quick moving and ever-changing.