About Face

Now, here’s an interesting little piece that has flown under the radar.

Facebook’s upcoming front-page overhaul (sure to cause weeping, gnashing, conniptions and consternation) will have a subtle twist to the status line.

It will no longer force you to write in the third person tense.

The current status message kicks you off as such:

No matter what you intended to write, it always starts with you. This made things awkward for those who would cross-post between Twitter and Facebook, because Twitter is rather open-ended and more of the Tweets are intended as direct conversation and reply.

The new status line (as advertised below) will be prompted with a simpler question:What’s on your mind? Clear, direct, and not necessarily as narcissistic in that the focus must be on you.

It will be interesting to see whether the Perenially Indignant Facebook Hordes will choose this alteration for their chief beef, or it will be allowed to slide into adoption. Personally, it’s a much bigger deal than most would initially guess, because it alters the author’s mindset. It may even change the tenor of what people communicate in Facebook status messages.