The Psychology of Facebook Examined 189
jg21 writes "In this analysis of the psychology of Facebook, a British FB user makes some telling points about how simple the reasons behind its success are. Among them, fear of 'online social failure' features prominently. From the article: 'Facebook also digs away at the insecurities in people...your peers can see your profile on Facebook, and while they may have 50, 100, 200 friends they will mockingly see that you have a pathetically small number, confirming your worst fears about the low opinion they have probably held of you over all those years etc.'"
Executive Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
That's about it.
Now, the author could go on to discuss the quality of those friends or some deeper psychological impact that this has on youth today (you know, like the title might lead you to believe). But, unfortunately, the second part reads more like an ad for Facebook than even an objective quantifiable analysis at what makes it better than other sites. I enjoyed this gem:
Well, that sounds pretty opinionated and also very unhelpful. After reading this article selling Facebook, I feel like I need to use Facebook for social networking but I don't even know why
They also criticize ad placement in Facebook with a graphic that reads: "Facebook Ads! Yuck!" while on their site I notice a top banner, a left hand 'ads by Google' and also Advertisement boxes on the right. Um, you probably want to lay off the way that Facebook earns their income, especially when A) you say they're great for being 'free' and B) the site you publish on is using the same method.
So, a borderline Slashvertisement that is hilariously hypocritical and undertakes a psychological analysis of users on a social networking site without doing any surveys or real research that is often necessary to be able to say anything about your 'psychological studies' since any assumptions in the field can be as crazy as Sigmund Freud's Penis Envy Complex [wikipedia.org].
I'm going to go ahead and give this article an F and ask for the last ten minutes of my life back.
Re:Executive Summary (Score:5, Funny)
Heck.... (Score:2)
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But my friend kept going on and on and on about who was on it, what they were doing, John Smith is now a Lawyer
Re:Executive Summary (Score:5, Interesting)
You know...rather than trying to gather 100-300 online 'friends', I guess I've just been busy with my 10-15 REAL friends. Most of them, I've known for over 20 years. I already know if their married, kids or not, what they do for a living. We all keep in touch by varios means, but, nothing is better than the face to face visit.
The important people (some I've known since I was 11yrs old), are the ones that I'd toss my house keys to, trust with my dog and other worldy possessions. These are people that I'd trust to help me in a life or death situation...people that I'd loan money to without hesitiation if they asked. I'd much rather spend my time on those friends rather than trying to rack up 100's of names for a website.
Don't get me wrong, I love to find old acquantences from the past...and hope they grow into friends, but, in general time spent grooming and promoting real friendships is time better spent.
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Re:Executive Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
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People who spend large amounts of time socializing through the computer just st
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'Course, I'm an anti-social geek so 200 friends would drive me nuts.
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Re:Executive Summary (Score:4, Funny)
In addition, during this transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Notes is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on Facebook, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen Facebook run faster than its social networking counterparts, despite Facebook's faster Web 2.0 architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs Orkut faster than this 300 mhz machine does Facebook at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Facebook is a superior social networking site.
Facebook addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use Facebook over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
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(though in most cases, classic is synonymous with troll)
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MySpace has a significant advantage over facebook - that is the length of time it has been running and the user base. People will put up with something that isn't so great if all their friends are using it (insert IM client you think is lousy here).
If MySpace and facebook launched at the same time
Facebook is upper class (Score:2)
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It's not expressed well, but I think the same thing
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So you claim that the looks are disgusting but not bad like MySpace (which is possibly the most successful social site so far) but bad like "My first attempt at HMTL" ... like all the customized pages on MySpace? I'm so confused, if you're going to knock them for bad looks, don't compare them to the top dog. Obviously looks don't make or break a social networking site. In fact, I would wager that marketing (movies have their own MySpace pages now, what?) has much more to do with it than usability or functionality.
I use Facebook and not MySpace because Facebook is pretty and MySpace is hideous. In my opinion, it is the biggest selling point of Facebook. Just because the most popular social networking site is ugly doesn't mean we should make that some sort of standard.
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it works for older people because its an excellent way to get in touch with old classmates and it works for business because its a already established market XOR demographics to advertise.
this article sounds like its written who doesn`t know ish about online communities or the youth or today and the internet`s impact on it, and it being
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Are you sure you're in the right place I'm sure if you've been here long enough to have mod points you have seen plenty of reasons to not use IE6, such as IE6 was unsafe 284 days in 2006 [slashdot.org] or the lack of tabbed browsing (a feature which I thought little of until I had grown used to using it). Having separat
The real reason (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The real reason (Score:5, Funny)
I see this every day. For real.
Re:The real reason (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, to paraphrase an old military recruitment campaign slogan, all I need is a few good friends.
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Disclaimer - over the past decade I have participated in BBS's, usenet, IRC, forums, and now social networking sites (roughly in that order too). I actually have a lot more "real-life" friends through Myspace and Facebook than I do any online forum.
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Total cost for 2 people to go: $60-70.
Coincidentally the MPAA is losing money as social networking sites gain popularity
I don't have to worry about this (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I don't have to worry about this (Score:5, Funny)
Does anyone remember the days where having your own website on Geocities or whatever automatically made you a big nerd? Man, I even had my own free top-level domain name back then... If only I knew how cool that actually was, I could have built a an empire and I would be getting mad p-ssay!
50 friends (Score:2)
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Re:50 friends (Score:5, Funny)
NOTE: Subscribers can have up to 500 friends!
[x] Tell me more
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Of course this definition of friend is the sort that would bring you chicken soup when you had the flu, help you dig an old oil tank out of your yard, take your kids up to their cabin so you could have a quite weekend with your spouse, help you get through the loss of a family member or divorce...
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Re:50 friends EXACTLY (Score:2)
Such persons should be ranked or called virtual acquantainces until justifiably called a REAL FRIEND.
Many of these sites bankroll on gobs of INSECURE, EXTRAVERTED people. I am some of both, but not to the tune of hundreds of friend
large number of friends? (Score:5, Funny)
They can see I have a pathetically small member?!? I *knew* I shouldn't have bought that webcam.
Oh.. number... sorry... :-)
Well, who cares if I don't have any friends - I mean, why else would I be using Facebook.
* disclaimer: I happen not to have a webcam, or use Facebook. And fortunately I was blessed by God. Still don't have any friends though, why else would I be posting on /. ?
Friends (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Friends (Score:5, Insightful)
I only have 12 friends on facebook because...I only have twelve friends that USE facebook. I don't just add random people because they're from the same school/region, and I don't accept request from the same.
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Seriously, it was a non-article. I'm not even thinking about how many friends I have on there but I am floored by how easy it has been to connect with people I haven't heard from in years and all the need applications that have been built on top of the platform.
But this article was just a piece of rubbish. He misses the point, people in my demographic don't collect friends. A lot of us look to reconnect. We've gone through i
It's multiplayer Address Book. (Score:5, Interesting)
Where I really draw the line is in "friending" people that you've never met except via Facebook/Myspace, and that you have no real connection to otherwise. It seems like at that point, you've transformed what's basically a useful online addressbook into ego-boosting wankery.
I really like Facebook, but I guess I'm just not really into "social networking." (Whatever that means, exactly.) To me it's a good way to keep track of people's changing contact information (it was so much better back when they had an automatic export-to-VCard option) and occasionally to browse photos (although, if you have more than a handful there are better places to go, like Flickr).
Ultimately what I want out of Facebook is just a version of 'finger [gnu.org]' that's simple enough for non-technical people to use. As they've gotten further away from that core functionality, it's become less compelling.
useful as an address book (Score:2)
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Re:Friends (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't have hundreds of friends... (Score:5, Interesting)
Because I know I can't keep up with >100 people, I don't bother to try.
Not to mention that the feed would run for pages.
Soo, it seems I don't fit into TFA's first three, or last two categories.
For those of you who aren't going to read it, that leaves one category.
And not to attack the author, but this is a reprint of something he wrote for his blog.
friends list envy (Score:3, Insightful)
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Oh noes! (Score:2, Funny)
low friend count? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:low friend count? (Score:5, Funny)
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* Web 2.0: Someone who recognizes your name and is willing to click a mouse button.
* Reality: Someone who will help you move.
* Fiction: Someone who will help you move the body.
I want something that's a cross between a telephone book and a year book for my town. Actually, I want to be able to click on a web page and see everyone employed in my building and their name, their position and their picture
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I have around _15_ facebook friends most of which are real friends. Anyone with 60/70+ facebook friends is most likely just adding anyone they know
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Facebook is a social networking app. That's it. That's all folks. Who says it's gotta be for best friends only? What if it is a social
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Really... you go to a friends house a 1000 miles away, and he has his buddy over for like an hour one night, and you'd add him to your friends list... so you know if you ever wanted to call him up you could... or if you wanted to show him pictures of your vacation you could... or because you wanted to check out his vacation pictures... or the pictures of his kids (who you didn
Thirty friends is more than I'll ever need (Score:4, Interesting)
30 friends is a good number to keep up with for me. My "news feed" gets filled every day and I get to keep up with all of them easily.
Facebook is engineering their customer base (Score:2)
Who Cares? (Score:3, Interesting)
I run a small, free SN website, that I've tried match between MySpace and Facebook, people do click round and add random people to their friends list, but surely its a good thing to get to meet new people that you wouldn't normally do, whether its online or not?
I actually met my girlfriend, soon to be wife and mother online, so I think its a great thing and just some fun, but you have to admit all the news about Facebook groups and someone getting thrown out of school, reporting of bullying online as well as all the 'analysis' of Facebook or Myspace is all about publicity (positive or negative doesnt matter) for them - I'm sure half of it is marketing!
Re:Who Cares? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Who Cares? (Score:5, Funny)
Dude, that's gross.
Where do you live, in a trailer park or something?
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I've seen plenty of people mentioning their girlfriends on Slashdot, but until now I had never yet seen anybody mention they knocked up an internet lady for ePenis++.
Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
So just like real life then.
As in, there are some people who think that the number of friends you have (however rare you see, speak or do anything with them) is more important than a smaller number of quality friends who you see, speak and socialise with more often.
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I don't get it... (Score:2, Insightful)
I may be old fashioned... (Score:2, Insightful)
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Why do people participate in discussions on slashdot? They too are just a certain arrangement of 1's and 0's that are interpreted a certain way through computers and networks. But sometimes those arrangements can actually make you think about something, or learn something.
I am not saying not to use all sorts of different mediums in your daily live, but maybe it's more convenient to just email your friends, or post a meeting online to say you want to meet up after
My Facebook experience (Score:2, Insightful)
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Because the 'wrong link' has a legitimate purpose -- to direct somebody who is already in your network (i.e. lives in your city, goes to your school) and already on Facebook to your FULL profile, not your publically neutered one.
But if someone who is NOT already in your network clicks the link, it should go to the public profile, not a "You cannot access this" page.
There is absolutely no reason the full profile and public profile cannot have the same URI. (well, there is if you want people who are in your network to be able to see the public profile separately, but then you can just have two URIs, _either_ of which go to the public profile when accessed by an outsider).
It's poor design.
Old dog... (Score:2)
Facebook doesn't take much to run (Score:5, Interesting)
The amazing thing about Facebook is that it's a tiny company. Facebook headquarters is in a little building at 170 Hamilton Avenue in Palo Alto, next to the yoga shop and nail salon, and across from the retro soda fountain. It doesn't take much in the way of staff to run the thing. The servers are in Northern Virginia, but most of the staff is in that little building in Palo Alto.
Now that's successful "Web 2.0".
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I remember reading an article a few months back about how Craigslist runs its offices out of an old Victorian-style mansion in CA that actually costs somewhat less than traditional "office space". They only keep a small staff on hand, pay them well (proportional to the success of the company), and accordingly, have never lost an employee.
Sure, this strategy won't make the owners/founders of the company uber-rich, but it does quite a bit to ensure the
Avoiding Social Failure... (Score:3, Insightful)
As for the 300 "friends" argument - I have little time in real life for people outside work who aren't good friends. I certainly don't have time to maintain tenuous relationships electronically with people I barely know or barely remember. It's the quality of your friendships, not the quantity.
10 Years ago (Score:3, Interesting)
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Quality vs Quantity (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll take quality over quantity any day of the week
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I'd rather have... (Score:2, Insightful)
Confirming your fears, or... (Score:2)
Gee, I don't remember ever caring what other people thought of my social status in high school. Some people are fine with 200 shallow friendships and others just stay close with a dozen pe
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Vicious thing, that subconscious ego...
Not Psychology (Score:2, Informative)
More's the pity, because psychology is (as always) a few years behind the times, but some work is finally starting to be done on the real principles governing social networking behavior. Wendi Gardner and one of her graduate students at Northwestern, whose name I am chagrined to admit I cannot recall, have some work in online social perception (thou
However (Score:2, Interesting)
Insecurity flies both ways (Score:4, Interesting)
Instead of people bragging about their high friend count, everybody on
Another thing a lot of y'all don't realize, not everyone is exactly like you. Not everyone values a small group of close friends over a large social network of drinking buddies and that's OK. Your way is not the only way to create a social circle, stop looking down on others simply because they have a large social network with shallow relationships.
And you know what? They know their social network is mostly shallow relationships and they're OK with that. They're the ones who built it!
meanwhile (Score:2)
Facebook -- your Privacy online? (Score:4, Informative)
Your email, address, friends, music, books, other interests, and who you're dating are all available on Facebook for whoever wants that information, together with your political views, club associations, educational background, possibly even your job history.
Besides the information that you yourself put online, Facebook also contains information that it actively gains about you through other means -- just check their privacy policy: [facebook.com]
The US government has let it be known that they want "Total Information Awareness" [wired.com] for a while, and sites like Facebook end up linking all kinds of intimate personal details of large groups of people, making it one of the ideal sources for gathering that information.
The CIA is using Facebook as a recruiting tool [wired.com], but Facebook itself also seems to have gotten its funding from people from people heavily involved in the CIA. [albumoftheday.com]
The CIA has also been very interested in student activities for decades. [cia-on-campus.org] Most of today's leaders got started in political activities as students, and students are much less guarded about their self-expression, so it makes sense that universities would be perfect places to start gathering information for anyone planning to influence future political events.
So go ahead and post all your personal information online, but just be aware of people other than advertisers who might be looking at it and why.
Come on mods, now really (Score:2)
The modding on Slashdot has gotten way out of control. It seems like too many Digg users are coming here trying to "digg down" any posts that they don't agree with.
If you don't agree with it, contribute to the discussion by explaining why it's wrong but don't just mark it as flamebait to hide it from people. Privacy is a legitimate issue and very important in the online world. People should also know when their data is probably getting added to government databases.
The post is accurate and wel
CIA and Microsoft as partners? Well done Facebook (Score:2)
Throw in a bunch of typical private investor types and a megalomaniac boy-wonder CEO and they've got all the "right" boxes checked.
Wow, such hostility (Score:2)
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