Author: Dean

Facebook has recently announced a number of updates to Trending, a feature that shows topics currently popular on the platform. Users in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and India have been able to see Facebook trends since 2014. On the Web, they appear in the top right corner, and on mobile, the trending topics can be seen from the search bar. The updates make three changes… and they mark an important move away from the personalization that has until now defined social networks.

Paul Jun destroyed a wedding. He brought together a gang of friends, waited for the right moment then charged into the ceremony and began smashing things up… and killing the guests. The wedding took place on World of Warcraft between two players who had met and matched up in real life, and Paul was engaging in what he called “troll-like behavior.”

Look around your neighborhood. You’ll probably find people a lot like yourself: similar income, similar education levels, similar outlook, similar views.  It’s what journalist Bill Bishop called The Big Sort, the tendency to choose to live among people similar to ourselves. It’s one of the factors that has led to America’s polarization. When we meet and make friends with people who are like us, we find it harder to see the world from a perspective different from our own.

Imagine that you’re on your way out of your therapist’s office. The elevator opens and the person waiting by the door gives you a double-look. You’ve never seen them before. You don’t know them. But they know your name, who you work for, what school you went to, the details of your recent break-up, your struggles with an eating disorder, and of course the fact that you’re seeing a therapist to get your life back in order.

It’s hard to believe now, but back in the early days of the Web, when Amazon was still a bookshop and Mark Zuckerberg just another geeky Harvard student, websites didn’t have comments sections.

Remember MySpace? It used to be the king of social media, the platform that other social media platforms wanted to be.

Chances to beat Zuckerberg at his own game don’t come around too often but owners of private social networks have a glorious opportunity right now.