Facebook is the biggest social network on the Internet. It has ushered in the generation of online connections. It gives any user the ability to meet every other user. The website is simply dedicated to people meeting people all over the world. On Tuesday, Facebook celebrated its 10th birthday as the grandmaster of social networking.
How did it celebrate? By being so generous as to offer you the “Lookback” feature. Right now, if you log in to Facebook and then enter the address extension “/lookback,” you will be directed to a new page where a video is waiting.
What happens next is a 62 second video composed of photos, statuses and videos posted since the person’s page was made. It sounds touching at first, and it might even seem considerate of Facebook to think of each user personally.
But the video doesn’t reflect the personalized sentiment. It starts with a soft piano melody reminiscent of Coldplay’s “Clocks” and is just as cheesy. From there, the “camera” pans over a large wall of Facebook photos. All of your selfies, red Solo cup parties and awkward Christmas cards flying past while a piano forces you to feel nostalgic about these not-so-heartfelt pictures.
You may be very proud of some of your Facebook photos, but I doubt you want to be reminded of your very first profile picture. Correct me if I’m wrong, but do you really need to remember your date nights with your ex over music that could have been pulled from “The Notebook?”
From your photos, the video moves to your “most liked posts.” Cue the music and here comes that gem “Im siuio srunnnl!!11!11” which would later translate to “I’m so drunk!” with the location tag of your Bar Mitzvah. Listen carefully and you can hear hundreds of thousands of grandmothers clutching their pearls at your supposedly sweet “Lookback” video.
Several posts and pics later, the piano crescendos, the cheese factor jumps to 11 and the camera stops on the ubiquitous Facebook “Like” hand. If anything, the video reminds users of just how much of their lives are in the hands of Mark Zuckerberg and company.
Overall, Facebook missed it on this one. The “Lookback” idea was the site’s way of thanking its users for 10 years of traffic. It was a heartfelt concept that I find poorly executed because Facebook is full of everyday people. There is nothing wrong with any of the content on a Facebook profile. I’m just confident that people don’t have any desire to relive all of their antics on Facebook. If they did, they would be continuously bumping the same pictures and posts every day.
Don’t think me ungracious. Your users do appreciate you, Facebook. We are thankful for everything you have done in the way of networking. We thank you for giving us something to do when our friends get boring for five seconds. We thank you for 10 years of the good ole white and blue.
One piece of advice: when Facebook decides to thank users in another 10 years — and yes, there will still be Facebook in 2024 — maybe try something different. How about a hologram of my friends’ wisdom teeth videos?