The Facebook check-in feature began a long while ago — in 2010, to be precise. The purport is to let friends know where you are.

We’ve heard quite enough about how FB wastes our time and so on, but the drift here is why such features attract popular attention at all. I’d say, if you want your friend in Bangalore to know you’re in Delhi, how much does a one-minute phone call cost? And, why would you want everyone to know you’re in Delhi?

And yet, the GPS-based check-in feature is attractive. There’s a solid reason. It’s the same reason Twitter is so popular.

People want other people to know they’re there. In a “modern” society, individual alienation has reached the extent of people wanting other people to know where they are, to say something just so that someone else reads it. I’m not saying Twitter isn’t useful: I’m saying the social Web is a social commentary. The more unsocial we get, the more of a social Web we need.

Owen Thomas put it beautifully in 2009: “I Tweet, Therefore I Am.” “The clinical psychologist Oliver James (says) ‘Twittering stems from a lack of identity. It's a constant update of who you are, what you are, where you are. Nobody would Twitter if they had a strong sense of identity’.”

That was a deep insight in seven years ago; it’s quite obvious to us now.

Back to FB check-in: Your check-in map stays there for a long time. I’m not sure about the privacy terms there, but I do know that Facebook uses it in some manner or the other. If you remember Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, you might have seen this comic image:

Image source: https://www.jitbit.com/alexblog/222-julian-assange-vs-mark-zuckerberg/

We’re at a stage where we broadcast ourselves for the benefit of corporations.

But it couldn’t have been any other way.

Tags : Facebook