198) See Friendship

(Photo from Facebook's blog.)

Later, "See Wall-to-Wall" link. Last Thursday, Facebook quietly replaced the function with Friendship Pages, or the "See Friendship" link. Essentially, a Friendship Page is a aggregation of all shared Facebook activity between two people - wall posts, photos, events attended, mutual friends, etc. It's a clear, well-rounded documentation of friendship, as expressed on Facebook.

The very concept of being able to see other people's friendships mapped out is one sprung from social media itself. Before, there weren't any public displays of friendship - you wouldn't share all your emails, photos, notes to one friend with another friend. Did we even care to know what went on between two mutual friends back then?

Now, because we can, we do. We are able to be voyeuristic in an anonymous way, giving us the freedom to peek in on people's friendships and relationships (Especially relationships. Friendship Pages software engineer Wayne Kao cites, "One of my favorite Facebook moments is browsing photos from friends in the News Feed after they've begun a new relationship, gotten engaged or gotten married," as his inspiration). And now with Friendship Pages, Facebook does the work for us, aggregating info we once sought out onto one convenient page.

This social media-born curiosity of what goes on between friends or between significant others - healthy, unhealthy or besides the point?