If I Were Zuckerberg
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Jacob added an answer.
Facebook : What features do you wish Facebook had?
TL;DR: I think that "facebook for project sharing" is one of the most important "low-hanging fruit" projects yet to be done currently in existence.
Feature request: A way to share projects a la MinimalistHomepages.tk - Google Drive
It amazes me how many (even technical) people I know don't have a homepage, often because they feel a need to make it fancy, and they miss out on the incredible life-organizing capacity creating a centerpoint for oneself on the web can have.
I think facebook is poised to solve part of this problem by lowering the barrier for people to make these homepages tremendously. Indeed If I were Mark Zuckerberg, I would actually recenter facebook around project sharing in a structured way. Imagine if right next to the photos link was a box where you could input all the projects/writings/art/music -- everything -- you've created that you're proud of in the format ofMinimalistHomepages.tk . It would help me gain a sense of what everyone I care about's doing. It would help people self-reflect and take pride in their work. It would be amazing to explore from an anthropological perspective: what's everyone at MIT doing? Everyone at Stanford? Everyone in America? Everyone in Iran?
Most importantly, this information would enable the matching of people who are working on synergistic projects, which I believe is a tremendous step towards creating a world where we all work together to meet our collective goals.
Eleanor Roosevelt remarked that "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people." The internet is full of tools to help discuss people and events, but lacks a real medium for discussing ideas and sharing projects (realized ideas), which is what I care to talk about most of all. We need to go about resolving this deficiency, and I believe Facebook could lay the groundwork for doing so tomorrow.
Poke me if you have further questions as to how this could be done, at [email protected].
See also IdeaOverflow IDE (Idea Development Environment) which is a tad outdated.
- “You're right, having an easily editable web page does make you want to post things on it. I need to make it shinier. Thanks for making me make one!” ~Semon Rezchikov, ex-Thiel Fellow
- “jacob this thing is damn addictive and i dont think its supposed to be. this whole space thing. i keep wanting to update it with something”
- “I hypothesize that if everybody made a minimalist homepage, there would be no more terrorism, or at least it, and war, would dramatically decrease -- you could see the people on the other side as humans, and also have a medium for your voice to be heard, and a mechanism that causes you to refocus on what in life you are proud of”
- “Wow! The process of making a minimalist homepage is a form of computer-aided meditation. I think it is a first step at a digital solution to the Existential Question: What are we doing here anyway’? Well, let’s first map out literally what everybody is doing, and then go from there! ”
- Sam's Space is a masterpiece of minimalism. It is a perfect minimalist homepage. It is an example of a bare-bones, human-readable schema for creating a projection of yourself into digital space that puts no pressure on you to take time or be fancy.
- Possible future domain name: “Project.me” - a minimalist homepage is a mapping of your projects. It’s also a projection of your self into digital space. Finally, it’s the centerpoint online for “project me,” the project of yourself, e.g. Project Jacob. This is a subproject of “project Earth” which we are all working together to achieve
- Another possible domain might be "proud.of" -- because fundamentally, this is a map of things people are proud of.
- If I were Mark Zuckerberg, I would restructure facebook to center it around project sharing in a structured way.
- “A tremendous step forward in the project of including people in what Kafka called the ‘circle of humanity’”
- I totally agree with [a friend] that the look isn’t fundamentally different than HTML lists. My goal is to be able to enable people to make a homepage with absolutely 0 coding though, perhaps because the groups I'm most interested in having go through this workflow are people who are very much in need of turning their life around or gaining inspiration. I would love to have prisoners getting out (or going in?) or homeless people in a shelter apply this self-reflective workflow to themselves and, through it, come to see themselves clearly and become inspired and continually reminded to make a life change.
- What also is very interesting to me is that the vast majority of my super high-achieving friends lack even simple homepages. Sometimes they're of the "i'm going to make it super pretty or not make it at all" mentality. Sometimes they just don't feel it's that important. Giving people a way to respectably make a super minimal homepage empowers them to reap the benefits of having a homepage sooner. Creating a list of all homepages that lets them see that "all the cool kids are doing it" gives them pause and makes them think "I wonder why all these smart people are doing this?" which inspires them to follow suit. Finally, seeing the structure of categories on the template homepage /other people's homepages invites people to see what's lacking in their lives and facilitates the project of educating them (or rather, of them educating themselves). Maybe by looking at my homepage, they'll realize they've never written a poem (or haven't written one since elementary school), which is something I feel sorry for anyone who hasn't done (lol is that grammatical?). They'll become aware of the previously unnamed gaping holes in their lives that are leading them to feel dissatisfaction.
- (It is as Heinlein writes: "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.")
- ...but my real question is: how many of you have a homepage? And how on earth would I have found it w/o googling furiously? I want to see what you guys are all up to! At the very least, you can make a minimalisthomepage and add a link to it to the list. (If you already have a homepage you can make your minimalist homepage contain a single link to your actual homepage. But it is valuable even for those with homepages already to make a minimalist homepage as well, as that way you can attempt to fit yourself into a consistent structure and see yourself in relation to others.)
- So actually, how many of you don't have homepage at all? And equally relevant is the question: how many of you have a homepage that I don't know about despite my googlestalking abilities?
- Gives perspective on yourself on your pursuits
- Lowers the activation barrier for making yourself a homepage!
- Lowers the activation barrier for posting stuff!
- Counteracts Dostoevskian Underground Psychology by helping people take pride in their work!
- Learning the workflow of making a simple website with Google Docs gives me a new super quick programming-free way to prototype ideas for websites; it lowers the activation energy for my creativity!
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Comments
Phil Jones (He / Him) · 10y
Yes!.
I've basically diagnosed Facebook's lack of collaboration tools as conclusive proof that they don't see themselves in the "humanity augmentation" business but the "keep people dumb and watching adverts" business.
That's why I closed my FB account this year.
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Ronnie Rendel · 8y
In other words, Facebook's current focus is entertainment, not productivity. This will change (and Occulus might have a big part in changing that), and yes - this is where you want to be in terms of developing apps that are ahead of the curve.
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Phil Jones (He / Him) · 8y
Well, I'll accept they changed their focus when they change their business model. As long as their money comes from adverts, rather than charging users for services, then they're in the "entertainment" business.
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