Facebook’s Content Moment


It’s probably not coincidental that the furor among the technorati this weekend over Facebook’s content ownership policy comes as the Facebook tag-you’re-it, chain letter style list making craze is hitting fever pitch.

Hard to say where that craze began (or, some might say, migrated over from MySpace), though the 25 Random Things brushfire certainly drove social networkers into a frenzy (my sister, feeling unloved because no one had tagged her yet basically begged her friends to tag her).

I spent part of the weekend responding to the latest Facebook listmeme, 15 Albums–a list of audio recordings that “changed your life.” It was a fun exercise for me–not only because I enjoyed the social status of being tagged and tagging, not only because the process of making the list drew me through a string of joyful memories (hearing Otis Spann and OrnetteColeman for the first time), but most of all because I loved reading the lists of my friends. Social networking invites TMI-burnout. But the artifice of these exercises brings to even a confessional medium something both voyeuristicly remote and warmly inviting.

In fact, I found myself hungry to read more lists, any lists, all lists, lists posted not only by my Facebook friends–whose conversation I lustily enjoyed but whose musical tastes were largely familiar–but also posted by strangers. I wanted to follow the chain back through every tag to the beginning.

But no can do, at least not easily. These lists are typically posted as Facebook “notes” and can only be shared among one’s friends and network members. I understand, Facebook never setout to be a content company. It’s a social network. Friending is its lingua franca. Maintaining the integrity of relationships is crucial to the semi-intimacy that makes Facebook work. Providing experiences that incentivise members to make new friends is the alchemy that makes Facebook grow.

But the 15 Albums list is a variation on a very familiar sort of traditional entertainment journalism (ie, the desert island list, etc). It’s also a Web 2.0 version of Web 1.0’s roboticly named “user-generated content.” It is interesting stuff to read. And, one suspects, it is potentially valuable to Facebook.

I’m not sure the list craze in particular was on the mind of Chris Walters this weekend when he posted to The Consumerist  an analysis of Facebook’s revised terms of service–suggesting that Facebook’snew TOS gives the company a perpetual right to use in any way, anything posted by users now and forever whether users remove the content or not. But Walter’s post set off a tempest in a teapot among some of the technorati.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg responded yesterday on the Facebook Blog clarifying the nature of the policy:

Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who they share it with. When a person shares information on Facebook, they first need to grant Facebooka license to use that information so that we can show it to the other people they’ve asked us to share it with. Without this license, we couldn’t help people share that information.

One of the questions about our new terms of use is whether Facebook can use this information forever. When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created—one in the person’s sent messages box and the other in their friend’s inbox.

Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message. We think this is the right way for Facebookto work, and it is consistent with how other services like email work. One of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear.

But if Facebook is to be a platform, as is Zuckerberg’s ambition, then the company would do well to think beyond the tight circle of friends when it comes to certain kinds of user created content. Facebook as a microblogging platform would benefit from some organic mechanism for sharing more broadly content of the 15 Albums sort, some way for content created inside Facebookto cross the public-private wall more easily, some kind of central repository or tag for such content that would allow easy access to it for Facebook users beyond one’s circle of friends.

For my part, well, here’s my 15 Albums list. If you want to join the discussion on Facebook, please do. How? I dunno. I suppose you could ping me as a friend with a note saying you’re coming from Newcritics. Post your 15 Albums tagging me in the note. And join the Newcritics group. Or just reply here. Let’s keep the conversation going.

Think of 15 albums that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life or the way you looked at it. They sucked you in and took you over for days, weeks, months, years. These are the albums that you can use to identify time, places, people, emotions. They might not be what you listen to now, but these are the albums that no matter what they were thought of musically shaped your world.

When you finish, tag 15 others, including me. Make sure you copy and paste this part so they know the drill. Get the idea now? Good. Tag, you’re it!

BTW, I’m trying to do this w/o too much thought…reacting more to the question that thinking about it…the records that connect to something deeply personal for me

1) Common One - Van Morrison
First got laid to this one…a weird religious sexual thing and a fantastic experience all around.

2) The Shape of Jazz to Come- Ornette Coleman
Found a box of library discard records on the street in Greenwich Village once, including this one. Put it on the turntable and listened to the weird cross rhythm tug that leads to the mournful melody of “Lonely Woman” and I was literally transfixed…I felt like a bolt of light was shooting down from the ceiling and holding me in one spot.

3) “Burning Fire” - Otis Span
I heard this on a Vanguard blues anthology I took out of the Ossining Public Library when I was in 8th grade…my parents had been cracking the whip on my piano lessons for years, but suddenly I knew what the piano was for.

4) “Remember Me” - The Soul Stirrers
First heard this on the Tony Heilbut-produced LP anthology Fathers & Sons–it’s out of print and it’s CD successor, Kings of the Gospel Highway, doesn’t have “Remember Me.” Since I’ve collected the original 1940s Aladdin 78. RH Harris is one of my two or three favorite singers of all time…This isn’t one of his greatest leads, but record that moves me more than any other. (There’s only one CD of the Stirrer’s Aladdin sides–a mixed bag of 78 transfers on P-Vine out of Japan.) Note to whoever outlives me: make sure they play this at my funeral.

5) Fireside Chat with Lucifer - Sun Ra
A souviner of the first Sun Ra show I ever saw–an early 80s gig @ Jazzmania in NYC. So mindblowing that I, a broke college student, hid in the bathroom as they cleared the house for the second set, then sat in the back nursing a beer so I could hear more.

6) Thelonious Alone in San Francisco- Thelonious Monk
I love Monk, esp. solo Monk, and this is his most fluid and best recorded solo album. I’ve listened to it thousands of times perhaps. The version of “Ruby My Dear” is my favorite Monk performance of my favorite Monk song.

7) Kick Out the Jams - The MC5
Still my go to disk when I crave rock guitar noise.

8) Astral Weeks - Van Morrison
Wouldn’t have made it through my adolescence w/o this mixture of the ephemeraland the eternal, can’t wait for the AstralWeeks live shows later this month

9) The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle - Bruce Springsteen
Those romantic young boys, all the ever wanna do is fight….

10) Highway 61 Revisited - Bob Dylan
11) The Complete Basement Tapes - Bob Dylan (bootleg)
12) Music From Big Pink - The Band
Our American gothic.

13) Stand Up Comic - Woody Allen
1970s Casablanca twofer culled from Woody’s early 1960s Colpix records. I can still recite every routine word for word. First prize went to the Berkowitz’s, a middle aged couple dressed as a moose….

14) Maggot Brain- Funkadelic

15) Stay Positive - The Hold Steady
Which rekindled a long lost love for rock and roll.

Plus all the others: Cookin’ w/ The Miles Davis Quintet , Dock Boggs Country Blues , the Monroe Brother’s RCA Victor sides, Sinatra’s Songs for Swingin’ Lovers , The Smiths - Hatful of Hollow , Ray Charles complete Atlantic recordings, Sly & the Family Stone’s Stand , all the Staple singer’s VeeJay sides, Sam Cooke’s Night Beat and all his recordings w/ the Soul Stirrers, TS Eliot reciting The Wasteland on the old Caedmon LP, various Hendrix, most esp. The Cry of Love but also Axis: Bold as Love , Robert Johnson King of the Delta Blues Singers , all the Sabicus records I’ve ever heard, et al….

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February 17th, 2009
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Viewing 16 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    I agree, copying the TOS from google, pointless.
    • ^
    • v
    Well, I won't Facebook, but...

    1. Gladys Knight and the Pips, Anthology. I learned to dance to I Heard It Through The Grapevine and The End of Our Road... and I love to dance. I can still lose it to the "chug chug whoo whoo" of Friendship Train. And years later... I noticed that Gladys can... as they say... sang.

    2. The Supremes, Anthology... and then I discovered that Motown made a lot of Anthologies. And I found Diana Ross... or rather, she found me.

    3. Frank Sinatra, Songs For Swingin Lovers. In my teen years, I discovered that my parents had a record collection, and I listened to it. I found out who Nelson Riddle was... and after some research, I found out about Billy May, too.

    4. Depeche Mode, Some Great Reward. I discovered MTV in its first year... but it was my sister who went out and acquired the early evidence of the British New Wave. So, yeah, I knew about "People Are People" before it hit the pop charts... but more to the point I learned that :"Everything Counts in Large Amounts."

    5. Eurythmics, Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This. My sister found Depeche Mode. I found Eurythmics. Androgyny changed my life. And still, when I hear it... it feels like I'm 17... again.

    6. Madonna, True Blue.
    7. Madonna, Like A Prayer.
    8. Madonna, Erotica.
    You have to understand - each time, we thought she'd hit a pinnacle that couldn't be surpassed. How could she top herself? What else could she do? You could add of Ray of Light - my friend J would - but I don't; it was these three albums, and their singles, that changed pop, changed dance music, changed the lives of a generation of gay guys. Oh yeah... and Vogue isn't even on any of them.

    9. Donna Summer, Another Place and Time. It's not her most transcendant album; much of it is disposable dance pop... but when Donna Summer teamed up with Stock Aitken Waterman, the architects of nineties Britpop (and Kylie Minogue and Rick Astley and Bananarama's superstar status, just for starters), it made Donna relevant again... and justified a lifetime of believing in her, and disco. I still do. In both.

    10. Ella Fitzgerald, The Cole Porter Songbook. How do you discover Ella? Do you just hear a song one day, and say "I've got to find out where that comes from?" Does somebody tell you that the definitive versions of many standards come from her? Who can say? All I know is, I spent sweet, hard earned money - and a lot of it, at the time - for a two album set on CD because it just seemed important. It was. It is.

    11. George Michael, Listen Without Prejudice, Volume 1. This is George at his "I can do anything" best - Freedom 90 alone is worth the price of admission - and if he could do anything... who couldn't?

    12. Indigo Girls, Nomads, Indians, Saints. It's fun to be a boy among the lesbians.

    13. Pet Shop Boys, Very. Did I mention I'm gay? Do I need to? :)

    14. Sting, The Dream Of The Blue Turtles. Now, not so much... but then, who knew? Arty, pretentious... these seemed like good things. It just shattered my notion of what pop music could be, and what I should ask for, what an audience should be entitled to expect.

    15. Whitney Houston, My Love Is Your Love. By this time, she'd already changed my life (when I saw her, live, in the summer of 1985)... it's just that the first album, and the second... they're more a collection of singles than a thought through exercise... but My Love... is a masterpiece, and when you think about how she did it at perhaps half of her full powers... it's unbelievable.

    16. Reba McEntire, Whoever's In New England. I don't like rules, and frankly, my musical journey isn't complete without a nod to country music. Probably, it started with Coal Miner's Daughter... but it wasn't until the eighties, with the "new country" of The Judds, Randy Travis, Dwight Yoakam, and Reba that I found a way in. Reba's voice... my goodness.
    • ^
    • v
    Remembering Whitney Houston breaks my heart.
    • ^
    • v
    heart breaking, yes utz true, but it is also true that when we 've a lot of mail & message over the different sources/ links in facebook we feel bore to read out those. and also feels too disturbance reeving different poke up and invitations/ suggestions!
    • ^
    • v
    Though I enjoy this sort of discussion, I find it difficult sometimes to remember all the records I've loved and that, in that weird connection pop culture (esp music) can have, loved me back. I'm also thinking that so many of my favorite records are singles - songs and records that I can't live without, that are so good they need not have (and perhaps originally did not) come from an album. I still recall in 1966 hearing "When a Man Loves a Woman" by Percy Sledge on the radio. It's one of those singles (many soul records among them) that I have never tired of hearing, and never will. Certain singles simply ARE, and I love what they are no matter where or when or how many times I hear them. Albums? For those I typically have to be in the mood to listen.
    • ^
    • v
    I think the list is not so bad.. It is really nice to remember some old songs..
    Great post..
    • ^
    • v
    Depeche Mode "Violator" is number one for me.
    • ^
    • v
    You're right Van Morrison should be No.1 on the list.
    • ^
    • v
    . It's one of those singles (many soul records among them) that I have never tired of hearing, and never will. Certain singles simply ARE, and I love what they are no matter where or when or how many times I hear them. Albums? For those I typically have to be in the mood to listen.
    • ^
    • v
    I'm also thinking that so many of my favorite records are singles - songs and records that I can't live without, that are so good they need not have (and perhaps originally did not) come from an album. I still recall in 1966 hearing "When a Man Loves a Woman" by Percy Sledge on the radio. It's one of those singles (many soul records among them) that I have never tired of hearing, and never will.
    • ^
    • v
    I'm also thinking that so many of my favorite records are singles - songs and records that I can't live without, that are so good they need not have (and perhaps originally did not) come from an album. I still recall in 1966 hearing "When a Man Loves a Woman" by Percy Sledge on the radio.
    • ^
    • v
    Facebook as a microblogging platform would benefit from some organic mechanism for sharing more broadly content of the 15 Albums sort, some way for content created inside Facebookto cross the public-private wall more easily, some kind of central repository or tag for such content that would allow easy access to it for Facebook users beyond one’s circle of friends.
    • ^
    • v
    I find it difficult sometimes to remember all the records I've loved and that, in that weird connection pop culture (esp music) can have, loved me back. I'm also thinking that so many of my favorite records are singles - songs and records that I can't live without, that are so good they need not have (and perhaps originally did not) come from an album. I still recall in 1966 hearing "When a Man Loves a Woman" by Percy Sledge on the radio. It's one of those singles (many soul records among them) that I have never tired of hearing, and never will.
    • ^
    • v
    I still recall in 1966 hearing "When a Man Loves a Woman" by Percy Sledge on the radio. It's one of those singles (many soul records among them) that I have never tired of hearing, and never will.
    • ^
    • v
    I'm also thinking that so many of my favorite records are singles - songs and records that I can't live without, that are so good they need not have (and perhaps originally did not) come from an album. I still recall in 1966 hearing "When a Man Loves a Woman" by Percy Sledge on the radio. It's one of those singles (many soul records among them) that I have never tired of hearing, and never will.
    • ^
    • v
    I completely agree with the above comment,Looking forward to reading more from you


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