Why I Still Use Facebook

Every now and then I hear about how awesome Google's search algorithm is and how it uses infinite parameters to give the most relevant search results. Well to be honest, Google's search results never fail to astonish me, considering the mammoth task of filtering the enormous data available on the web.

On a different note I get to hear about how social networking and in-turn Facebook may soon loose its charm as people have finally learned to resist the temptation of peeping into other's life and that guys are no longer interested in knowing which movie did the hot girl in the other group watch this weekend.

But when you think about it you will realize that "We don't use social networking sites for networking anymore" And the most common use is not to know about other people. Just see the number of jokes, trolls, news articles and review you read while scrolling down your FB home page. We are using FB to filter content. And this is what makes me believe that the Facebook phenomenon may last longer then we expect it to.

Facebook As a Content Filter

Imagine that you are trying to predict what kind of articles I would enjoy reading. You might look at the my reading history and predict that I am only interested in topic xyz. But this approach will fail to predict that I might be immensely interested in an article on movies which somehow also talks about my college but in no way is related to xyz. So the best approach towards solving this problem would be to see what my friends, the people I have consciously subscribed to, are reading or sharing on the web.
I am confident about clicking on a link I see on my FB page because I know that it was read, approved and shared by someone I already know and has something in common with me. Add to that the fact that I can also see how many of my other friends like the same content. This ensures that the content I see is filtered by a group of people who are most likely to think in a way I do. I am in no way suggesting that everything we see on FB is interesting or relevant. But without discrediting the search algorithm, I think that as of now filtering by my friends is still the best way to filter the enormous amount of content on the web.
Hence instead of reading a whole newspaper end to end, I just prefer to login to my FB account and read what is most shared.

PS: You might want to like and share this blog in the interest of your friends who are relying on you to get them the best content from all over the web.