It’s a question of immersion, the difference between browsing casually on Facebook, playing one of the many games on offer or using the online chat is in part, determined by how immersed the user intends to be. There is a good chance that more mature users of Facebook may be uncomfortable playing a game that involves some serious levels of attention, however for younger users it can be second nature. Let’s face it people don’t behave in the same way day in and day out, they wear different masks depend on where they are.

From a system owner point of view the more immersed the user is the better, so why in the world would it be good to offer the user greater control over how exposed they are to a system?

Levels of immersion are in practice already in many systems, a simple login on a blog increases the users level of engagement. What if the users of a system that had a myriad of services and functionality on offer could determine their own level of engagement or immersion; In other words they can decide how deep down the rabbit hole hey want to go or turn down the brightness and volume on the TV.

For example, sometimes Facebook users don’t feel like paying much attention to others whilst online, they simply want to play a game or just scan through a set of photographs without being disturbed. I suggest that larger, more complex systems such as Facebook and Yahoo should offer immediately effective and responsive controls, similar, in effect to IM status changes, ideally via a graphical device.

As well as or instead of being controlled by the user, the system could automatically increase the level of immersion over the course of a session and indicate that it is doing so via the graphical controller. Once the user is accustomed to the nature of the controller the user has the option of disabling that automation.