Facebook and their psychology experiment
20 Jul 2014 • chickensinenvelopes.netWhat really interests me, however, is the question of utility. There’s an argument that if Facebook can make its users more happy by manipulating their feed, then they should. But what this exposes is the question of whether Facebook is an information service or an entertainment service: is the primary goal to keep you updated about your friends and what they’re doing, or is the primary goal to entertain your users and make them happy?
Utility is a huge topic here. Even just imagining the scope of what is possible makes my head spin. If you have 1.3 billion active users and could make even as little as 1% of those users 1% happier for a day… that is a huge positive force to be reckoned with. From what I’ve read it sounds like the actual real-life impact might be much, much higher.