There are so many people who are tired with Facebook, especially given the recent privacy scandals that rocked Facebook thanks to Cambridge Analytica. Not only that, but Facebook has become this social media site where the best you can see are status updates such as “Ask me anything”, “GM”, “GN”, recycled and stolen jokes, and a significant number of irrelevant emojis. To make it worse, Facebook has tinkered with its News Feed algorithm to the point where users can hardly receive status updates from more than 10 or so friends; where same updates from those 10 friends will be repeating down the News Feed as oen scrolls down. There are those who got tired of Facebook long ago and ran to Twitter or LinkedIn or both; but there are those of us who can’t go past Facebook, hoping that someday a better social media platform, something like Gmail, would come along to save the day.
Twitter is where one can get some mature discussion, but the problem with Twitter is that it is not friendship based. The reason why Facebook is so personal is that it allows people to become “friends” on the platform, creating that illusion that you know each other, even when the two of you are total strangers. LinkedIn tries to bring this connection home by allowing people to Connect, but the problem with LinkedIn is the professional nature of the platform and how it is job centric.
A platform that creates the type of friendship Facebook offers but also ensures a level of professionalism that one may find in LinkedIn is what is lacking, and I think Google can step in and transform Gmain into a social media platform, instead of it being just a simple email exchange programme.
If Google were to transform Gmail into a social media platform, it would stand a chance to revival Facebook, not just in terms of quantity of users, but also in terms of quality of engagement. Gmail already boasts of over 1 billion active users, just as Facebook, but the bulk of those active interactions are interactions that are deemed important – not just interactions that pass along silly nonsensical jokes and self styled emojis that have no bearing.
Google may argue that they already have a social media platform in the name of Google Plus, but Google Plus is a social media platform that resides outside Gmail. What I have in mind is something that works just as Facebook. If you treat Facebook Inbox as an email Inbox, then you’ll agree with me that Google can introduce News Feed, Groups, Pages, and the other interesting social media features right inside Gmail, instead of giving those a separate platform in the name of Google Plus, which by the way has refused to flourish despite years of promotion by Google.
Consider this article as a rant against Facebook; since I am well aware Google may not even notice this article, and even if they do, they are likely not going to pay attention to the well thought out suggestion.
