{"id":1290,"date":"2008-09-29T09:37:59","date_gmt":"2008-09-29T09:37:59","guid":{"rendered":"\/ifbookblog\/?p=1290"},"modified":"2008-09-29T09:37:59","modified_gmt":"2008-09-29T09:37:59","slug":"putting_the_book_back_in_faceb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/2008\/09\/29\/putting_the_book_back_in_faceb\/","title":{"rendered":"Putting the “book” back in Facebook"},"content":{"rendered":"

With October just around the corner, American universities and high schools are gearing up for homecoming celebrations, those unabashed nostalgia fests. There’s just one problem: the yearbook, one of nostalgia’s favorite vessels, is obsolete.
\nThis summer, the Economist reported on the slumping sales of college yearbooks<\/a>, rightly citing the ascendancy of social networking sites as a major factor in the decline. The article, otherwise well-reported, is sullied by some editorializing in its final paragraph:<\/p>\n

Although today’s students find yearbooks old-fashioned, they may one day miss their vanished youth. Long after Facebook and MySpace have become obsolete and the electrons dispersed to the ether, future alumni might just wish for the permanence of ink on paper.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Callers on an NPR Digital Culture segment<\/a> had similar misgivings, as did those interviewed by the Toledo Blade<\/a>. Though I’m by no means a Facebook apologist, their argument strikes me as specious. It conflates intangibility and impermanence; because we can’t hold the website in our hands, it says, those electronically-stored memories are liable to disappear on us overnight. While I’d never bet that Facebook and its ilk will be around forever, I believe its information can and will persist at one venue or another — there’s little to suggest that digitized content is somehow more ephemeral than its print counterpart. In fact, at present, more users are concerned about their ability to destroy that information<\/a> than to preserve it. If anything, Facebook might be too<\/em> permanent. So much for that pesky electron ether-dispersion…
\nDespite the presence of “book” in its title, few critics to my knowledge have construed Facebook as the ultimate electronic yearbook. They focus instead on its broader “social network” applications. That’s all well and good, but what is Facebook if not the quintessential model of an electronic book done right?
\nLike its conventional print brethren, Facebook chronicles the lives of a certain network’s members. It’s teeming with photos and groups; its wall posts are the digital equivalent of those slangy well-wishes from your friends and acquaintances (and maybe a stranger or two).
\nSince users provide the data, it’s matchlessly comprehensive — and most of this data, if not all of it, is driven by nostalgia and memory-making, the desire to memorialize your glory days. Certainly it’s no coincidence that, when it launched, Facebook catered exclusively to college students, with high-schoolers hot on their heels. This demographic overlaps perfectly with “the yearbook years.”
\nOne of the yearbook’s biggest drawbacks has always been its linearity: how many people do you know who read them from start to finish? Facebook’s search bar bypasses that structural issue, providing a degree of accessibility that strikes fear in the hearts of yearbook indices everywhere. Facebook’s contents are individually tailored, fully customizable, and unconstrained by timeframes.
\nIt’s also totally free.
\nThe site, then, is a better yearbook than any yearbook can be. It suggests that the networked screen is, at least for this purpose, an infinitely more versatile medium than the static page. In considering Facebook as an electronic book rather than as a mere web franchise, we see how this new medium can improve upon the tried-and-true formulas of the print age.
\nTo be sure, I’m not championing the sort of navel-gazing, quasi-addictive Facebook usage that consumes some of my generation. (Full disclosure: I’m 22.) Nor am I claiming that social networking sites are the only cause of waning interest in yearbooks as an institution. I’m just saying that the turning point has come and gone. Consider that a Bethesda, Md. high school recently republished Facebook photos<\/a> in its yearbook; consider that DePauw University’s 2008 yearbook modeled itself after Facebook<\/a> to woo buyers. If this isn’t the simulacrum replacing the original, I don’t know what is.
\nThere’s arguably another, bleaker lesson to be learned here, which is that Facebook’s true victory over print is predicated on its ability to massage our narcissism. Perhaps MicCalifornia, a commenter on the Economist piece, says it best: “The first thing we do when we get our yearbooks is see how many pictures we are in. Who needs it when with Facebook, I am in all the pictures.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With October just around the corner, American universities and high schools are gearing up for homecoming celebrations, those unabashed nostalgia fests. There’s just one problem: the yearbook, one of nostalgia’s favorite vessels, is obsolete. This summer, the Economist reported on the slumping sales of college yearbooks, rightly citing the ascendancy of social networking sites as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}