Social Computing Magazine has posted an interesting article on the success of Facebook, which just yesterday subscribed it’s 30 millionth user. Why has it done so well, and what is it in us that keeps us pinned to that site? John Kirriemuir provides six points on why Facebook has such popularity.
1. Collecting. The collection of friends is psychologically like that of collecting stamps or hockey cards. It sounds pretty cynical, but I caught myself doing this. I saw someone on Facebook that I knew from years ago who I was never really friends with, more just knew and was uncomfortable around. Suddenly, I felt compelled to be friends with on Facebook. Do I care enough about this person to be in contact, at all? No. But if that person becomes my “Friend”, then I’ll have more of them. Says the article:
To give your collection a bit more personalization, you can optionally agree with your friends how you met and add on other bits of information, write on their profile wall, and so on. So you aren’t just remembering and “collecting” friends, but collecting relationships between people.
2. The paranoia of “not being invited to the party”. Once you sign up to Facebook, you need friends. And fast. How wonderful is the feeling of not having any “Friends”. I know this feeling well, perhaps not with Facebook, but with my poor Twitter account (that wasn’t a hint… but… my username is samcarson).
3. The voyeurism. Yeah, I looked at the wedding photos of the girl I knew in High School with the pretty eyes. That doesn’t mean I’m a stalker. No, really. After all, she (or someone she knew) made them available, as I made my wedding photos available. Also, I like using the status messages, and I am not alone:
Facebook is up-front about letting you keep an eye on what your friends are up to. There’s a status box. You type in – if you want – what you are doing. There’s another page where the most recent updated status of your friends are listed; here’s a screenshot of a good example. Currently, of my peers, Dan is off to Paris, Tom has just completed a half-marathon in 2 hours 10 minutes, David in Lewis is bottling his home-made wine, and Jenny has finally bought a house. Utterly meaningless to you (unless you are my evil twin or stalker), but of interest to me. The same way that your friends are of no interest to me but of much interest to you.
4. More interesting are the demographics. Facebook may have started as University thing, but it is now taking off with the over 30 crowd. It’s layout and features appeal to “grown-ups” in a way that MySpace and previous social networking sites could not. Also, you don’t find yourself getting friend invites from pre-teens called “Summer”, but rather your Facebook experience will mirror your social group, your network of “friends” will usually have some relationship to your real group of “friends”. As John Kirriemuir puts it:
No, there is a generational thing there, and I’m more comfortable with peers who are very roughly within my age range. The birthday/age feature on Facebook tells me the youngest friend I have is 25 (four of them) and the oldest is 74. If you are too young to remember life under Thatcher – and worryingly, this year’s University intake will contain that generation – then we probably aren’t going to be discussing politics anyway. And I’m not going to turn into one of the dull people who turn up at every village meeting and start their sentences with “In my day…”. No, 25 to 74 is fine.
Interesting the relatively small percentage of 25-34s.
Statistics from TechCrunch’s post: Facebook Users Up 89% Over Last Year; Demographic Shift
5. The autobiography. Facebook features like the social timeline, provide interesting detail to your Friend list. If you add date information to your relationships with your Friends, it can draw up an interesting portrait of your social history. I haven’t used this, but Mr. Kirriemuir seems to.
6. The customization of the Facebook Apps. We at Carson’s Post have looked at this development before. The Apps are interesting because they keep you engaged with an evolving your Facebook site. I think this ability to “tinker” with the site keeps people engaged for longer, and it is so unbelievably easy:
Adding new functionality is done within Facebook – no FTPing, or messing about with files or directories. It takes literally seconds, which means that an application of interest can be very quickly experimented with. Several times I’ve installed, played with, and uninstalled applications in under 2 minutes. Therefore, it appeals to people who like to tinker and experiment, but don’t have the time, inclination, knowledge, attention span or geekiness to mess about with anything technical.
Well, it’s got me. According to the Guardian, it’s also got half the employees of the BBC. within it’s population. A population similar in size to that of Canada. Small wonder when Yahoo offered close to $1Billion last year, they were quite happy to turn them down.
