The "Social" Assumption

The employees of social media companies are mostly concerned with making sure that our friends are involved with as many things in our lives as possible. All of a sudden, there's this strange assumption that we'll actually be interested in sharing the most trivial, banal, and boring parts of our day. Quite wrongly, companies like Facebook assume that everything is better if it's social. The company itself said in a recent earnings hearing:

We believe one of the biggest opportunities we have is to create the identity and social layers that all new apps and websites can be built on top of. We think almost every product is better when you can experience it with the people you care about so over time we expect almost all of these products should naturally become social.

Alexis Madrigal thinks Facebook is wrong:

Whether or not you think almost every product -- TVs, cars, pets, refrigerators, running shoes -- is better when it's "social," will probably determine your gut feeling about Facebook's long-term prospects.