For Times, They Are A'changing

There's quite a buzz going on about Wednesday's Facebook format change. I'm beginning to think that the designers have their end-goal set up, but they know that making such drastic alterations would be overwhelming. So they space out their little changes along the way. Sort of like eating an elephant one bite at a time. Hoping for only minor squabbles and expecting irritation to die down quickly, they step their way from one design to another.

It reminds me of that word game - get from warm to
cool in five steps. Then you change one letter at a time making 4 new words until you reach the goal. (Okay, for grins - warm, wart, wort, woot, wool, cool :)

I've seen the same type of manipulation in a lot of places. The little steps go unnoticed for the most part and the designers hope that by the time they get to their goal, their customers won't look back and notice how far they've traveled.

If anything, this Facebook adjustment says that people do notice. That fact in itself won't really make any difference, but at least folks aren't being fooled, allowing things to slide under the radar.

Change does things to people. At the onset, we don't like it. It irritates us to have our preferences ignored, or be so unimportant that we're not polled to the changes. The feelings of insecurity set in because we no longer know what to expect. Trust issues arise. Are the designers really looking at our best interests or are they just trying to accomplish their own private agendas?

It's the nature of change and, frankly, change is an integral part of life. Adjusting, accommodating, accepting are all ways that we grow, maturing emotionally and spiritually. Sometimes the three a's mean we need to give in and get along. When the items aren't that big a deal, or we can share the vision that the designers have, this isn't usually very hard.

Sometimes, the opposite is the better direction. Losing faith in the designers or regular outrageous changes might signal the time to adjust by finding another social outlet. To see if a new design team has a better plan.

As for me, I didn't mind the feed changes so much. In fact, I saw a bot about midday go through a huge list liking all the statuses. I would have hated to have that on my full-page feed. But I know others really like the ability to have more control over what they can do, so I can see their point as well.

No, I'm not this wishy washy on every issue. I promise! But I usually save my rants for really big things like how to load the dishwasher and when it past bedtime. Social media appearance just doesn't rank that high! :)

What's the funniest thing you saw on social media this week?