Facebook Predicts Its Own Immortality with Places

Aug 21 by Ty Dunitz | 5 comments
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Chances are, by now, you’ve taken Facebook Places for a spin. If you haven’t, Facebook really, really wants you to, having unleashed this unbelievably sappy promotional video into the internet. What amounts to Foursquare: Blue Version is touted as the most teary, sentimental thing in the universe. I almost expected the whole thing to end on a flowery photo album closing and an old man shedding a tear, having looked back on his life, remembering all those times he used Facebook Places to create his fondest memories.

And speaking of which, did you notice something about the dialog? Right at the end there, at around 2:10. Let me transcribe this for you. It’s surreal.

It’s a way for you to capture these memories in your life… to keep these markers on a timeline that you’ll go back and look at in 20 or 30 years and say ‘I remember that day so clearly’.

Facebook thinks we’re going to be using Facebook in thirty years.

Keep dreamin’, Zuckerberg.

WRITTEN BY TY DUNITZ

Ty is an illustrator who stays up too late, and has to wear glasses. You can follow him on Twitter if you want to (@glitchritual), but he's just gonna throw your stupid PR crap in the garbage, so don't email him.

COMMENTS
  • Jason

    That poor girl. She’s just trying to save money by grocery shopping, but Facebook is forcing her to have a meal with a “friend” causing her tofu block to go bad.

  • http://www.Inlaymansterms.info Dion Carroll

    This really “Grinds my Gears”. We all saw the guy updating his status while feeding his 1 year old (With chopsticks). He didn’t feed her and then use his iphone to update “Joe” he was updating Joe while feeding his daughter. WTF! Does anyone else see a major problem with this? What’s going to happen to our moments that are supposed to be sacred? I’m convinced that there is some evil entity behind this “full disclosure” way of living because it’s forcing us to record the moment as opposed to actually living in the moment. This is insane. Text’s are enough, as far as updating a pal. Pictures used to say 1000 words. I’m a tech guy and I love technology, but this isn’t technology, it’s something else that I can’t quite classify just yet until it’s confirmed that this ruins people’s lives in some way. One things for sure, The dad taking time away from his family for sake of an update is definitely on the right (wrong) track to helping my argument.

  • http://sunyinyufi.wordpress.com SunyiNyufi

    After watching that promo I feel weird for actually asking my friends where they like to hang out, and call them up when I want to meet them. Though it’s not like I don’t like spontaneous meetings, but I don’t really see how basically stalking eachother on Facebook is spontaneous.

  • http://www.mjswebsolutions.com Michael Swartz

    Sappy indeed! Ultra sappy.

  • http://www.seocompany4.com/ Vero

    Who knows how this will end? Maybe one day if we don’t update what we do at every moment we will cease to exist to the world. We stop living our lives to become the biographer of a live that has not been lived but noted.
    I can imagine the comedy (or maybe tragic) situation of being intimate with your partner while status updating on FB then later going back to FB to see what your partner felt!
    I am fairly techy and geeky but this app does not appeal to me as a new need.
    In respect of the Ad it uses the classic formula to appeal to sentimentality and a daft sense of community. It made me smile (except for the bit where the dad feeds the child at the same time it updates its status, come on pay attention to your child, you don’t want to be updating “on my way to the hospital poked my child’s eye with a chop stick” or “ups my child is chocking!”)