The social network is acting like that friend who plies you with drinks, compliments, and emoji in the hope you’ll spill some gossip.
Facebook really, really wants you to post a status. Not a link, not a news story, not a "share". It wants a piece of you: an original thought, or a photo, straight from your head or your life. And it’s deploying ever-stranger tactics to get you to do it.
First, there were the greetings. Users began seeing messages adorned with pictures of a manic-looking anthropomorphised flower, welcoming them to the site every day.
Some users, perhaps less regular ones, got a notification elbowing them to take a look at Facebook’s new, friendly persona.
Then, Facebook began to suggest what you should broadcast to your friends. At some point in the summer of 2015 (it’s hard to pinpoint when exactly, as these features are generally shown piecemeal to different groups of users) the status bar began to show lists of “suggested topics” in the form of hashtags. One user’s status box contained the mysterious message: “The Cavaliers [a basketball team] are playing today. What’s on your mind?” An emoji of a basketball floated alongside.
My Facebook page keeps asking me to fill out details of exactlywhen I attended my university, and maintains that my profile is “incomplete” until I do so. It recently suggested gently that my months-old profile picture was out of date. “Choose a recent photo of yourself,” it advised, “to show people who you are now”.
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