The Psychology of Facebook Examined

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.'"

Comments

Executive Summary

[eldavojohn]

So I think the only thing worth mentioning from this article is something that's obvious to the youth but apparently not so obvious to the older crowd--that younger people today use social networking sites (like Facebook) as a kind of status symbol.

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:

FR looks AWFUL. Not in a vile MySpace way, but in a "My first attempt at HTML" way. Facebook is slick and so 2007. Friends Reunited is clunky and basic, so 1997. There is no way any self-respecting net user is going to evangelise about FR. 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.

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.

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. No, no it does not. It is not an 'analysis' even by the loosest sense of the word & it certainly does nothing more than bash sites I've never heard about and avoid tackling the biggest obstacles for Facebook (MySpace and the zombie-back-from-the-grave-Friendster). Things must be awfully different between here and England for this to be frontpaged on Slashdot.

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

[Dancindan84]

See, that's why you should be like everyone else and not RTFA.

Re:Executive Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks! Now I don't need to

Re:Executive Summary

[GizmoToy]

I didn't get the disdain for the ads, either. The site is not charging its users, so something has to pay the bills. If there's no membership fee, it's got to come from advertising. I don't see the big deal there.

Re:Executive Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

I read your comment.. But I didn't heed your warning, and now I also want the last 10 minutes of my life back.

Re:Executive Summary

[ducomputergeek]

Frankly I didn't know anything about facebook other than the name until a couple weeks ago until an old college buddy and I were IMing. He was chatting about some of the old faces and names from our graduating class including some of my ex-college flings, etc. I poked around for 5 minutes on a lark, found it to be a nigh bit frustrating on getting access to groups, etc. and said the hell with it.

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, Jane Doe is getting her MD, Bob married Suzie, etc.. Seemed like most of the folks on there wanted to brag about something. Whether it was family and how happy they were, or look at my killer job and car, etc.. I just guess I don't care enough to really make the time to add a page or whatever it is you do. I don't have time. I'm busy writing on slashdot while I wait for video clips to render.

Re:Executive Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Facebook fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of Facebook for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy 17 friends from one group on the site to another group. 20 minutes. At home, on my Orkut account, which by all standards should be a lot slower than Facebook, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.

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.

Re:Executive Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

I lol'd.

Re:Executive Summary

[Mr_Silver]

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.

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 today - it wouldn't surprise me if facebook would be more popular.

Re:Executive Summary

[cayenne8]

"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, Jane Doe is getting her MD, Bob married Suzie, etc.. Seemed like most of the folks on there wanted to brag about something. Whether it was family and how happy they were, or look at my killer job and car, etc."

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.

Re:Executive Summary

[vimh42]

But we need someone to RTFA so we don't have to. You have made a great sacrifice. I salute you.

Re:Executive Summary

[Seumas]

Anyone who didn't already know that the entire point of youtube, facebook, myspace and other social networking sites is to cater to self-involved, narcissistic, attention-whores with low self-esteem obviously has had their head buried in the sand. It's a nonstop stream of idiots posting bulletins about every single thought they have or thing they do, putting up idiotic pictures to get attention and putting up long retarded videos from their bedrooms where they blather on about how hard life is or shake their ass to some brainless music so that a bunch of middle aged men will pay attention to them.

The fee for admission to social networking sites should be sterilization.

Re:Executive Summary

[Seumas]

I don't understand why people would use myspace or similar sites to let people know what's going on in their life. Isn't that what a telephone is for? Or.. you know.. hanging out or going out with your friends?

I don't read people's myspace pages or newsletters or anything else to keep up on their lives. If you have something going on in your life or some interesting news to report, then you can talk to me one-on-one. You're not so god damned important that you need to broadcast your life and thoughts to the masses. You can call me. Visit me. Even write me a letter or an email. Imagine that...

Re:Executive Summary

[Seumas]

The only news I've ever heard about Facebook is when one idiot highschool or college kid or another has photos of themselves doing something retarded and gets in trouble for it with their school, parents or police. I already have that on myspace. Why would I want to shift from one popularity contest full of fucking morons to another? Also, I'm not 18 years old. Why do I want a site that is geared toward highschool and college twits? So I can read for countless hours about how they need to beg mommy and daddy for more money and find out their latest top ramen recipe?

Re:Executive Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice.

Can you do a "Get Some Priorities" parody, too?

Re:Executive Summary

[ducomputergeek]

I agree. As I said, it was a lark to see what some of the people I knew were up to these days, but it's not anything that interests me that often. I kept up with 8 people from college. (and 4 are married to another). We even get together once every two years for a weekend somewhere. But that's getting harder as people are married and starting to have kids. Then there are some of us loosers who spent 5 years working and then went back to graduate school.

Re:Executive Summary

[loganrapp]

Sounds like this dude was looking for a reason to get a grant.

Re:Executive Summary

[Bogtha]

FR looks AWFUL. Not in a vile MySpace way, but in a "My first attempt at HTML" way. Facebook is slick and so 2007. Friends Reunited is clunky and basic, so 1997. There is no way any self-respecting net user is going to evangelise about FR.

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?

It's not expressed well, but I think the same thing. It's not so much the looks of Friends Reunited as the interface style. Back in the 90s, people made absolutely shocking design decisions that just left sites confusing and crippled. These days, there's at least some pretense at making things fairly well organised and easy to use.

Now sure, MySpace is really ugly, but that's because normal people choose to make it that way by customising their pages. You still have the standard interface elements that makes it (fairly) easy to navigate through the site. Friends Reunited, on the other hand, is designed by supposed professionals, and just gives you a headache trying to work out how to get from A to B. I don't think any thought whatsoever has gone into how people use the site, it seems they had an original idea that worked well, and then every expansion since has geared around finding a place to stuff a link to a new feature or finding a place to stuff an advert or charge money.

Re:Executive Summary

[frostband]

I'm going to go ahead and give this article an F and ask for the last ten minutes of my life back.

The first thing about this summary that caught me was that it was tagged "science" and it was from "socialcomputingmagazine.com"

I then searched for links or references to journal articles or studies. Finding none, I assumed that this was just a "pop" article.

It seems to me that an article shouldn't be tagged as "science" when it's just an article from a "pop-sounding" website that doesn't have any references to any journal articles and doesn't contain any of these words/matches: science, study, studies, research, journal, APA, APS, or the name of a research institution.

So I saved ten minutes by not reading the article. (then lost those 10 minutes by reading your post and replying to it)

Re:Executive Summary

[Xeirxes]

The interesting difference between Facebook and MySpace, for me, is that most of my friends on MySpace aren't really friends... just kind of a collection. On Facebook, my friends are the people I really care about and like to talk to a lot. I see many of them more than once a week. I guess there are different friend strategies for everyone, but I don't feel that the friend collection is the norm.

Re:Executive Summary

[Mister Whirly]

Actually, Myspace does have a legitimate, non-douchebag use. Bands. Keeping in contact with fans and getting information to them. It is how I got started networking among musicians, and seems to have been designed with this in mind. It is an excellent, easy to use, and free tool to promote your music. It has made my life as a band manager much easier in many aspects. I could care less about the 14-20 year old little rugrats who have nothing better to do than brag about stupid shit. I'm in it for the band info, venue contacts, and other musical network contacts.

Re:Executive Summary

[Hoi Polloi]

I was just going to say "Damn the RIAA!" and "Switch to Linux!" until I read that comment.

Re:Executive Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm giving you one single reason why Facebook is better (at least than MySpace):

You don't have to see Tom's ugly face

That, for me, does it.

Re:Executive Summary

[Tetris Ling]

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.

Re:Executive Summary

[xTantrum]

This article is retarded. facebook works because it already caters to young people who spend all their time online anyway and an excellent way to keep in touch with friends.

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 on slashdot just sounds like an excuse for geeks to talk about something cool when probably the majority on here aren`t on it.

mod me down, i`m not here to make ``friends`` on slashdot - ANOTHER ONLINE COMMUNITY!

Re:Executive Summary

[kalaf]

Personally, I find Facebook really handy for keeping up with the day to day comings and goings of friends, both past and present.

It would be kind of mundane to call up an old acquaintance half way across the country and discuss her new Kitchenaid and the batch of cookies she just made with it, but as a series of status updates over a couple days it led to a humorous exchange on our changing value systems.

It's also a good way to keep everyone up to date all at once. When my sister-in-law changed her status to "is getting excited" we all knew she must be starting into labour. For the next 24 hours, that status was what kept us up to date, and the pictures showed up right after that for those who couldn't get out of work to go visit immediately. I wish I'd had that option. I had to send out an email when my daughter was born, and I missed a few people I really shouldn't have (I was feeling a little rushed...) Yes, I also called the really important people like siblings and grandparents.

Sure, high school students use it to wrack up hundreds of friends. So what. I don't, and don't feel the need to.

Re:Executive Summary

[drix]

Here here! It's rare I find someone else who shares this outlook, esp. in an online forum. I have way fewer friends than most people I know, and they're scattered literally across the globe. But we go back to high school in most cases. They're like family. I'd take a bullet for any of them. In a way it's bad, because I find myself hardly even making an effort to make new friends, being completely content with the ones I have now.

People who spend large amounts of time socializing through the computer just strike me as creepy. Even though that's most people so, hey, what does that say about me? I don't know :-)

Re:Executive Summary

[Lockejaw]

The only news I've ever heard about Facebook is when one idiot highschool or college kid or another has photos of themselves doing something retarded and gets in trouble for it with their school, parents or police.

It turns out that most of people's everyday lives just isn't newsworthy.

Re:Executive Summary

[Gilmoure]

Yup! Most of my LJ friends are people who've I've known 20+ years. LJ does make for an easy way to keep up-to-date after I moved cross country. I have maybe 5 people who've friended me over the last 3 years who I've only known online.

'Course, I'm an anti-social geek so 200 friends would drive me nuts.

Re:Executive Summary

[demachina]

The really important thing about social networking sites has been totally forgotten. The beauty of social networking sites is that, once you get the ball rolling, and sucker a certain number of people in to one, they drag all their friends in to them whether they want to be in them or not...and then they drag all their friends in because they are there and they don't want to look friendless. They are the definition of viral marketing and are the way to go if you want to get rich like a dot com millionaire in 1999, and you suck at marketing. Of course there is also a first mover advantage because once you have established a big social networking site you have an inherent advantage because people want to join the BIG social networking site, they want to join as few social networking sites as possible and they want to join the one all their friends are already in.

Call me old fashioned but plastering personal information all over the Internet is to me....ill advised. Its an invitation to identity theft, cyberstalking and future employment problems especially if you share a little to much information about yourself and its sucked in to Google for all eternity. Perhaps they are the rage amongst the young because young people haven't acquired enough of a sense of caution to prevent them from doing something that is ultimately a little foolish, like plastering all the details of your life, and your inner most thoughts... with photos... on the Internet.

Re:Executive Summary

[excelsior_gr]

All friends are REAL, unless declared INTEGER.

Re:Executive Summary

[feepness]

On Facebook, my friends are the people I really care about and like to talk to a lot. I see many of them more than once a week. Then seriously, what's Facebook for/i.

Re:Executive Summary

[nihaopaul]

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.

while thats good, think about what would happen if you "moved away for that job" or "married a woman/man in an exotic country after that holiday" or "just moved away because you saw no future in your own country" all are valid points and if you do get to travel you'll see more and more people moving out of their country. now you still have friends right? back home? perhaps right at the end of school you moved away with your family to another country, prehaps it was at a time when dialup was just rolling out?

what i'm trying to say is that facebook lets you reconnect with friends that you can't do 'face to face', the author is right in that FR is terrible, they charge you a fee to send messages to your friends! it is so 1997 and i wrote them an email last week trying to convince them to update their business model or die. and facebook is for the 'other' type people.

i speak with first hand experiences, i lost connection with friends i grew up with, international calls made it unlikely that i could phone and dialup access was just appearing to the market in england. in the last 2 months i've reconnected with about 12 friends i went to school with, grew up with, went through shit with and all on facebook, i could see them on FR since i was a member from when they first opened their server doors, but without owning a creditcard or banking options (thanks england!) i wasn't able to pay the 6quid required.

but, my sister done the same but lived in the uk and paid for FR, she has since tracked down a quarter of my mums side of the family (shit load of them!).

Re:Executive Summary

[nizcolas]

ah, if only there were a "classic" tag.

(though in most cases, classic is synonymous with troll)

Re:Executive Summary

[rgravina]

I'm living overseas at the moment, so it's nice to keep in contact with friends back home. Sure, there is many other ways to do that, and this is just another. Still not sure I like the wall concept though... makes it hard to have conversations. I'm not sure whether I should be writing on my wall or theirs.

Re:Executive Summary

[grrrl]

how is myspace better for bands than any other free blogging website?

Re:Executive Summary

[Mister Whirly]

It was designed with bands in mind. You can set up your space in a matter of minutes, create group lists to send out bulletins, post pics, play your songs, list your upcoming gigs, etc. - all of these tools are built in. Plus it gives you the number of people that view your page, to let you know an estimate of how good you are promoting it. There may be other free blogging sites that do this, but I don't know of any that are as full featured, AND well known as Myspace.

The real reason

[Jaaay]

behind the success of all SN sites is most people prefer to sit at home sending messages to everyone they may or may not know instead of picking up the phone. It's more impersonal so people find it easier to waste time casually instead of calling up 30 people and going out so much.

Re:The real reason

[wallyhall]

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comici d=877

I see this every day. For real.

Re:The real reason

[HTH NE1]

With all the comparing of friend-counts as a measure of social status, I treat Facebook and other social networking sites like a game of Global Thermonuclear War: the only way to win is not to play.

Or, to paraphrase an old military recruitment campaign slogan, all I need is a few good friends.

Re:The real reason

[kaleco]

I find social networking (in my case using Bebo) to be an excellent way of keeping in touch with casual acquaintences, like people I work beside, friends who have moved away or general people I don't really have a need to phone. Some people treat friends like Pokemon cards, and the sites certainly encourage this. When you log in to Bebo you're presented with an 'Updates' page which shows the latest developments in your contacts' social arms race- a list of who's added who to their friends list. However, I'm content to just use it as a way to keep in touch with my colleagues. Cheaper than a text message too.

Re:The real reason

[Tuoqui]

No its because going to a movie costs like $10-12 for the ticket. Then another $20 for a supersized popcorn and pop that'd make McDonald's jealous.

Total cost for 2 people to go: $60-70.

Coincidentally the MPAA is losing money as social networking sites gain popularity :P might as well blame it on that instead of piracy.

Re:The real reason

[Anonymous Coward]

I treat sites like that as Dweeb detectors. You haveto be some kind of dweeb that is not interesting to need everyone to come to you with a big counter of the number of friends you have.

I am a member on at least 30 forums as well as email groups and usnet threads and have many friends out there built the old fashoned way. IRC,USENET, and participation in discussions.

This crap that is the "social" websites today are utter crap. Get on a biking forum, fishing forum, monkey spanking forum and talk. posting useless drivel to a website and adding every stranger that comes along to your friends list is simply sad.

Re:The real reason

[Indefinite, Ephemera]

I have exactly five friends listed on my Facebook list -- all genuine, and to my knowledge not caring about having such an exclusive status. What bothers me are the seven requests I got from people I knew a bit in secondary school but was never really 'friends' with -- especially those who didn't bother to reply when I messaged them.

Re:The real reason

[damiam]

WTF are you talking about? A movie at my local theater is $8; $6 if you go to a matinee. No one's forcing you to buy popcorn, nor does the MPAA have anything to do with popcorn prices. Total cost for two people to go out to the movies: $16. Even if you live in a rich area that charges ripoff prices, $12 each isn't unreasonable for two to three hours of solid entertainment.

Re:The real reason

[mrscorpio]

The old fashioned way is IRC, usenet, and online forums? What does that make "going out into the world and making friends via a mutually enjoyed activity"?

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.

Re:The real reason

[slashedzero]

If you really want to see this in action, go to a public library. I can almost guarantee that 75% of the people on the computers are checking myspaces/facebooks. It's the only time I have the urge to light computers on fire.

I don't have to worry about this

[eln]

I have 2,874 friends on MySpace, and they are all super cool. All the women are constantly trying to get me to look at them naked (girls, please, one at a time! I'm not a machine!) and the guys are always trying to give me free stuff (iPods, Wiis, you name it!). I am truly blessed to have so many generous and caring friends.

Re:I don't have to worry about this

[phatvw]

Wow you are popular!

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!

Re:I don't have to worry about this

[Anonymous Coward]

Bill Gate is my friend too! He gave me a free evaluation copy of Windows XP :).

Re:I don't have to worry about this

[Hoi Polloi]

You sound like a real stand-up guy! Can you help me get some money out of a frozen account in Nigeria? It belonged to my late uncle, General Mugembe and I just need $5000 to pay the fees to unlock it. Thank you

Orkut

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Orkut you insensitive clod.

50 friends

[MillionthMonkey]

A person should have 50 friends, max. Problem solved.

Re:50 friends

[sqrt(2)]

So you're saying 50 friends should be enough for anyone? ...I'm so sorry

Re:50 friends

[genner]

Social programs that require more than 50 friends to run are bloated.

Re:50 friends

[wallyhall]

And with an attitude like that, I bet you have no problem meeting that limit!

Re:50 friends

[FieroEtnl]

There definitely are people on Facebook/Myspace/whatever social networking utility you want to examine that simply go through people and add them because they want to seem popular. I love that on one of the possible choices for friend details, you can click "I don't even know this person," and if you do, it comes back saying something like "Then why are you friends with them?" The people who could select that for the majority of their "friends" need to find real friends rather than bumping up their online friend count. I will say that it's a great tool for people who want to get back in touch with friends from high school or further back. My high school class is using Facebook to organize a reunion for the end of the summer because it allows much easier communication than making sure each alumni has their address updated with the high school.

Re:50 friends

[MillionthMonkey]

You already have fifty friends. To add more friends, please first select one or more of your existing friends and drag them to the Dead To Me folder.

NOTE: Subscribers can have up to 500 friends!
[x] Tell me more

Re:50 friends

[Analogy Man]

It has been said that if you need more than one hand to count your true friends, you should consider yourself blessed.

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...

Re:50 friends

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. 50 friends ought to be enough for anybody.

Re:50 friends

[Anonymous Coward]

DOUBLE NOTE: Gold plan subscribers automatically get 500 friends. Subscribe now for an extra 50 friend bonus.

Re:50 friends

[Threni]

50 friends, or some space on a server allocated to an array of 50 strings of alphanumeric characters? There is a difference. What's the point of Facebook again?

Re:50 friends

[jagdish]

Actually, 64 friends ought to be enough for anyone.

Re:50 friends

[ashooner]

I have always thught that FB should have classes of acquaintance, Many people I would like to keep touch with as facebook allows , but I wouldn't add as a friend.

Re:50 friends

[Aliriza]

I want to have firends from all over the world , what should I do ? :D Pay for platinium membership , lol.

large number of friends?

[gbjbaanb]

while they may have 50, 100, 200 friends they will mockingly see that you have a pathetically small number,

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

[dunezone]

Facebook also digs away at the insecurities in people. "I have one friend" probably makes some people feel a bit insecure and Billy no-mates. In the deeply insecure, this may be amplified by the lie-awake-at-night worry that 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. The individual who has less friends is more likely to be secure with themselves, since you know they actually try to create some sort of friendship bond. Ive had facebook since 2005 when my university was added to the system. So far Ive realized that the individual who adds everyone as a friend, even when the two people have only said "Hi" once to each other, is usually the person who is insecure and just fucking crazy.

Re:Friends

[Finuance]

Completely 100% true. Watch out for them crazies.

Re:Friends

[sqrt(2)]

Too fucking true.

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.

Re:Friends

[IgLou]

Why does it seem like these useless articles keep getting posted by Zonk?

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 iterations of lost contacts or losing touch and this is one way to reconnect without the chaos of some other sites.

Now if only that privacy policy was re-written so I'd feel a bit better about having my information there.

Re:Friends

[qdaku]

I recently got sucked into adding it after I moved away from university and started working on the other end of the country. It's handy to keep in touch with old university friends. Hell, I tracked down the odd person from HS I used to hang out with and sometimes they pass through vancouver and we end up catching pints.

Probably 60-70 people on the friends list. Of which I regularly see maybe 15. Sometimes see another 20 and the rest barely ever see. I treat it as a really fancy version of IRC that just happens to be handy for people giving me random books to read and good events in my town (a few 'friends' on the list exist only to trade upcoming shows and bands, which is handy).

I tend to add most people as a friend if they happen to track me down.

Insecure? Hardly. Just fucking crazy? Doubtful.

Re:Friends

[Lurker2288]

To be fair, though, one of my friends has tons of people on her Facebook page, and when I called her on it, she pointed out that a lot of random classmates/friends of friends/desperate guys sent her friend requests, and she would rather take the low cost step of adding them as a friend, rather than rejecting them and generating ill will. I guess you could classify that as insecurity, but personally I think it's a normal social reaction, given that it takes pretty much no effort/energy/thought to add someone as a friend.

Re:Friends

[0100010001010011]

Limited profile. Back when I used Facebook (before it was full of these wonderful "features"). I used my limited profile extensively. People that added me as their friend that I really didn't know too well got my limited profile. No pictures, no address, no wall. They just assumed I didn't facebook much. Every so often I'd either promote or demote people. I haven't seen or talked to you in 2 months. You're not a friend. We started hanging out and you're cool. Full profile.

Re:Friends

[gbalaji]

Exactly! I don't use Facebook much but I hang out on orkut once-a-while. Having more friends is neither helpful nor is anything wrong with it. I accept friend requests from even people to whom I may spoken just once long back. SN sites are just my active phonebook. I speak to my 'real' friends on the phone.

Re:Friends

[wamatt]

I had this problem too, people inviting you and you don't want to accept (school acquaintances etc). Well I just left lingering there in the top right corner and lets the requests pile up. That way you don't deny or approve them. Facebook really needs a "hide request" feature. I'd like to say that was my solution but after a while I got annoyed and just accepted them to my limited profile. :)

I don't have hundreds of friends...

[TubeSteak]

Mostly because I don't friend every casual acquaintance.

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

[Lazarian]

"and while they may have 50, 100, 200 friends they will mockingly see that you have a pathetically small number" I'd rather have 10 or so people who are worth communicating with than 200 who I could barely keep up with. Most people who have enormous lists of friends probably view themselves as being in a popularity contest anyway.

Re:friends list envy

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Yeah, I keep it exclusive. You've got to complete a 3 page off line application with supporting letters written by two friends already accepted. Got to keep the riff raff out you know.

Re:friends list envy

[thestreetmeat]

I have 211 friends, including an infant, a bronze statue, and Søren Kierkegaard. I don't see it as a popularity contest. I ignore 90% of them, but if I ever need a place to crash somewhere, I'm probably covered. It's not like all the extra friends are taking any time out of my day, and I like being able to contact casual acquaintances.

Re:friends list envy

[ThomsonsPier]

The ten or so people I deem worth communicating with are people I see on a regular basis. I use Facebook to keep an eye on all of the other buggers. You never know what they're up to. I think they're staging a coup.

Oh noes!

[mecenday]

You have more strangers in your friends list than I!

low friend count?

[SolusSD]

I have around 70 facebook friends- most of which happen to be real friends. Anyone with 200/300+ facebook friends is most likely just adding anyone they know.

Re:low friend count?

[Selfbain]

I was hanging out with a buddy of mine and I met a friend of a friend of his very briefly. They were from about 1000 kilometers away and I will never ever meet them again. They added me on facebook.

Re:low friend count?

[lawpoop]

70 friends!? I only have 15. Man, I'm never going on facebook again!

Re:low friend count?

[whyde]

Definition of "freind":

• 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.
  

Re:low friend count?

[pohl]

That could be true for a lot of people. On the other hand, they could legitimately have that many social connections, as in the concept of Connectors.

Re:low friend count?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure why everybody in this thread seems to think adding acquaintances as friends is such a bad thing. I'm not a compulsive adder but I will often add people I have just met because I hope that I will get to know them better in the future (possibly through Facebook). It's not like it costs anything to do so, and I don't see why I should be held back by people having the idea that I'm only trying to run up my friends count.

Re:low friend count?

[slashdotmsiriv]

"I have around 70 facebook friends- most of which happen to be real friends. Anyone with 200/300+ facebook friends is most likely just adding anyone they know."

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 ...

Re:low friend count?

[SolusSD]

sorry... you just don't have any friends. would you like to be my friend? I mean-- i'll add you. :)

Re:low friend count?

[kabocox]

Definition of "friend":
        * 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 are all I'd want. I see the same people day in and day out; I have no freaking clue what 90-95% of their names are. You know what I miss most about school? Roll call with the teacher calling out everyone's name. I never knew that I'd miss that until I realized after college is that they really don't introduce you around in the business/government world and just assume that you'll make your own friends.

School doesn't teach you how to build "friendships" or social networks. It happens, but it's more of an accidental thing rather than something that they encourage or actually teach.

Someone who will help you move.
For me, that's family. For my wife, that's anyone in her church, her bunco group, family, or anyone that she can draft. My wife gets drafted to assist others to move as well. Sometimes I think that she's on a "help me move" mailing list.

Fiction: Someone who will help you move the body.
I don't have any of those types of "friends." I don't have any bodies that need burying either though so it's all good.

Re:low friend count?

[vux984]

I will often add people I have just met because I hope that I will get to know them better in the future (possibly through Facebook).

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't meet) playing soccer?

I mean come on...

Sure if you meet someone and you hit it off and you genuinely want to pursue a friendship... sure go for it... add away... but when you are sitting their adding people you barely know who you'll never see again... whats the point...?

Or if you've been doing this for a few months now, rationalizing that "you'll get to know them better in the future", and your adding another 'friend' while looking at the list of 150 other people you added for exactly the same reason, none of whom you ever called. And even if you wanted to get to know them better well the logistics don't work... you only have 4 free nights a week... so even if you did something 'meaningful' with one every available night... it would still take over 2 years to get through the list...once. And that's if you stop adding people now.

I have better things to do than facebook. Like hang out with my friends.

Re:low friend count?

[theuedimaster]

I think all of you are missing the point here by going after people with high number of friends, and justifying those with a low number of friends (let's say 300 vs. 30). I keep reading posts about people who say they want to keep a low number of close friends on facebook, and that anybody who goes about facebook "friendship" differently is somehow insecure and inferior.

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 gathering place altogether by itself? Meaning... why does it have to reflect what you do in "real" life? That's why half of you guys play WOW or Second Life or something of that sort... Why can't facebook be separate? What's so wrong about keeping track of the people you've met? Doing this might give more meaning to meetings, and for godsakes, what's wrong with meeting more people? In the real world, you might brush by someone once or twice before they disappear from your memory. There's nothing wrong with making a little note that says - hey, i met you once!

In the end, facebook is what you make of it. Whether you have many friends on it, or just your close buddies, it doesn't matter. You are all justified.

Re:low friend count?

[tregetour]

I have ~150 friends. Yes, I've added a lot of people that I aren't super-duper-close friends. If all I added were my super-duper-close friends there would be no point to facebook - I talk to those people every day. I use it so that I can keep a link alive to people that I'm not very close to but cross paths with from time to time. Of course facebook-friend doesn't mean rl-friend, but that's ok, it still serves a purpose for me. It would be sad if all the 'net did was replace old interaction. I hope it is adding something new. I still have my rl-super-duper-close friends, but I also have a larger network of folks that I know and I have a tool of staying in touch with them.

Re:low friend count?

[markedmann]

Of course. Because it is unfeasible that someone would have more friends than you.

Re:low friend count?

[Mogster]

Fiction: Someone who will help you move the body. You mean those guys really aren't my friends? Damn I'm gonna have to whack them now too.

Btw: Anyone available to help me dump an old roll of carpet?

Re:low friend count?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, let me put it another way. If I meet somebody and think they are pretty cool, do I:

a) request to add them as a friend on Facebook and see where that takes me. maybe i end up cluttering my friends list and as a result pissing off some slashdorks.
b) sit there and weigh whether the eventual degree of friendship I can expect to attain will ever exceed some arbitrary level, which slashdorks for some reason seem to think should be high enough so as to be equivalent to somebody being a close friend in real life. this stinginess will keep my friends list nice and tiny and basically remove all of the benefits of a social networking system.

Not really difficult for me to decide. =)

For those who don't know what facebook is...

[wallyhall]

For those who don't know what Facebook is http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=mvepYYNjfBk ... sums it up quite nicely imo.

Thirty friends is more than I'll ever need

[hansamurai]

I actually really like Facebook, even though I've been out of school for over a year, I still go there every day to catch up with friends. The thing is, I don't really have a lot of friends on Facebook, about 30 I think, which for me is more than enough. Everyone I'm friends with on Facebook, I'm actually friends with in real life, or know them very well through online forums. I don't indiscriminately accept friends from random people with the same last name, or kids who went to high school with me that I never talked to; I wasn't your friend then and I'm not your friend now. At one point, I had about 10 people in "friend limbo". People who wanted to be my friend but I didn't have the heart to deny them, but I denied them all one day, so that's that.

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

[192939495969798999]

Facebook already knew this. Their "slick appearance" and easy integration with schools, etc. is really just a way to rope in a lot of customers, and play on people's vanity and insecurity in order to create a rich and detailed advertising market. How else do you find out for sure what movies people like? One easy way is to let them advertise what they think is "cool" to their friends. Isn't everything on Facebook just a cleverly (or not) disguised ad? IMHO they hope to derive most of their income from ad revenue (a la Google).

Who Cares?

[friend.ac]

Come on, who honestly cares whether someone has got 400 friends or 40, obviously it goes back to the old school days of "I've got more friends than you" but surely we've grown out of it - haven't we?

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?

[Icarus1919]

I don't know if it's a good thing to find a new mother online...

Re:Who Cares?

[multipartmixed]

> I actually met my girlfriend, soon to be wife and mother online,

Dude, that's gross.

Where do you live, in a trailer park or something?

Re:Who Cares?

[friend.ac]

I don't know if it's a good thing to find a new mother online...
Yeah, erm, shuffles feet, erm, you can pick anything up online - Whoops :-|

Re:Who Cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, who honestly cares whether someone has got 400 friends or 40, obviously it goes back to the old school days of "I've got more friends than you" but surely we've grown out of it - haven't we?

In my experience, people only grow out of it if they have to. When given the option, most people will gladly stay at that high school level of emotional development for the rest of their lives.

Re:Who Cares?

[Dr. Cody]

I actually met my girlfriend, soon to be wife and mother online,

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++.

Don't Read The Frickin' Article!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't read goatse either. (Warning, not even a legitimate goatse link! I DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS!)

Wow

[Mr_Silver]

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.

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.

Re:Wow

[ggKimmieGal]

Yeah to be honest... I don't have that many friends on facebook, but that's more to protect my privacy. I only allow friends to view my profile. Therefore, I only allow my real friends to be my facebook friend... Not because my self esteem is low or whatever. One of my old roommates had a goal of having 300 friends. She ended up making a lot of people just angry and annoyed when she would ask them to be her friend for the 15th time.

I don't get it...

[mdm-adph]

I revel in the fact that I have a small number of friends on Facebook -- to me, it means that the friends I have listed are close associates, and not shallow acquaintances like someone who has hundreds.

I may be old fashioned...

[Temtongkek]

I understand that these SNS are growing to a point where people are interested in analyzing the psychology behind them, but I still need to ask... What ever happened to meeting people in real life? What ever happened to "ring...ring... Hey, it's (name), let's grab a beer after work?" While I'm not qualified to go any deeper than casual, day-to-day observations, it's just astounding to me that so many people are placing that much emphasis on a certain arrangement of 1's and 0's that are interpreted a certain way through computers and networks. I have friends in real life. Granted, I even have a few that I talk to online, mostly because they live overseas. However, I still make damn sure to keep weekly, if not daily contact with my nearest and dearest here in the red, white and blue. This whole "I have more friends than you" bullshit is... well, exactly that, bullshit. GO OUT AND MAKE REAL FRIENDS. BEING SOCIAL AND FRIENDLY MAKES YOU MORE REAL FRIENDS. (and quite possibly gets you laid. ;) Just my 2 cents. I would like change back. heh.

Re:I may be old fashioned...

[lawrenlives]

Interesting to see people placing so much value on "real life" socialization and so quick to give it some mystical value beyond that of interacting with friends online, whether they are "true-friends" or mere acquaintances. Personally, in the ~15 years I've been logging on, I've cultivated many rewarding intellectual, emotional and artistic relationships without meeting face to face. Artists on social sites exchange ideas, collaborate on projects, people create masterpieces of technology, the examples are endless. When I think back to the time I spent out making real friends at bars and parties of my twenties, what did I get? Herpes, and a hangover, that's what! I think social networking could be the best thing that ever happened to the college crowd!

Re:I may be old fashioned...

[maddskillz]

I am not sure why the medium should matter.
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 work. Isn't that one of the points of all this technology?
That being said, I did cancel my facebook account, because I was sick of people who just were trying to have the biggest friends lists. If we haven't talked since elementary school, I probably am good with not talking to you again.

I'm wondering...

[phreeza]

why does "a friend of mine" hit refresh every 5 seconds, waiting for a friend to change his status, etc., instead of learning for his finals? Thats an intresting psychological phenomenon, too i guess...

Re:I'm wondering...

[kristinester]

Well, I'm going to pull a psychoanalytical / psychic explanation out of my ass and say that you're procrastinating for your finals because you're intimidated by the material. You believe that you work best under pressure and you will eventually start studying, but not until the very last minute. You'll end up getting a C on the final because of your inability to focus. Your friends will laugh at you, your significant other (if you have one) will leave you, your parents will be ashamed and then you'll be put on academic probation because you got C's on all of your finals. Eventually you'll get kicked out of school and begin a Web 2.0 company instead of finishing your degree.

It's not interesting. You're just being lazy. Go study.

Re:I'm wondering...

[sjobe]

I'm sorry. Have we met?

Re:I'm wondering...

[kristinester]

Not that I'm aware of.

My Facebook experience

[thewils]

A friend sent me a link for his Facebook profile. The link wouldn't work unless I was registered with the site myself. What a crock of shit I thought, as I declined to join.

Re:My Facebook experience

[tighr]

Then he sent you the wrong link. Ask him to go on to facebook, access his profile, and scroll to the bottom. There is a link there for "public listing", and a URL to be used by non-members of facebook. That link can also be customized via privacy settings to allow/disallow certain aspects of your profile to be publicly visible.

Re:My Facebook experience

[Random832]

Why doesn't it automatically redirect from the 'wrong link' to the right one?

Old dog...

[Nazlfrag]

I know that I for one have never been affected by these influences until Facebook came along. It's not like it's just a normal part of peer group dynamics or anything, it's completely new!

It's multiplayer Address Book.

[Kadin2048]

Seconded.

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' 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.

Re:It's multiplayer Address Book.

[opec]

I really like Facebook, but I guess I'm just not really into "social networking." (Whatever that means, exactly.)

What you call "social networking", I call "making friends".

Facebook doesn't take much to run

[Animats]

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".

Re:Facebook doesn't take much to run

[Anonymous Coward]

While I like facebook, I must say that probably any company who got funded by the CIA would be succesful...

Re:Facebook doesn't take much to run

[moosesocks]

And that's exactly how an Internet company should be run.

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 success of the company and ALL of its employees.

Facebook appears to have adopted the same strategy. What's more is that they don't seem to have experienced any noticeable growing pains. I've been using the site for quite a while (since the beginning), and it's always been decently fast and responsive. They had a few issues with their modifications to Squid in the *very* early days, but apart from that, I don't think I've ever been thrown to an error page (which Myspace does regularly, usually barfing up bits of their embarrassingly bad code with it because some sort of debugging switch was left on). Facebook even contributes to and maintains a few open-source projects, and are avid users of MemCached.

Avoiding Social Failure...

[puppetman]

If there is a fear of social failure, then wouldn't people avoid Facebook if they suspected that other hold a low opinion of them?

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

[Tragedy4u]

If you proclaimed you had 100 online friends you would've been branded a nerd and outcast. Now if you have 100 online friends you're a 'cool' person. The mentality of computers certainly has changed.

Re:10 Years ago

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, most of those are presumably people you met in person first, so it's a little different.

Re:10 Years ago

[bogjobber]

I would assume that's because people understand that facebook friends roughly correlate to friends in real life. If you told people you have 100 friends that you speak to only via IRC or WoW, I'm sure you would still see a similar social stigma.

What is it?

[Jack9]

I have no reason to go to facebook. Never have, dont expect I ever will.

Re:What is it?

[smartdreamer]

I share your view.

FB - ultimate stalking machine

[Cheesbo]

nobody said that the Facebook is the ultimate stalking machine!!!! I know people spending hours going through boys/girls that they like and look at their photos..wall messages, gifts etc. And people don't hesitate to put really personal photos on FB ;-) Sth like opening the magic social gate to the nerds!!! Now it is like an art... how to tell if sth is happening between 2 people on facebook? Either way, one thing is for sure now days. If you are a student and you are not on facebook you just don't exist... You want to be invited to the cool parties? Know where the cool events are taking place? Create an account now!!!!

Quality vs Quantity

[Rik Sweeney]

and while they may have 50, 100, 200 friends they will mockingly see that you have a pathetically small number

I'll take quality over quantity any day of the week

Re:Quality vs Quantity

[zegota]

Agreed. I have never, EVER heard anyone brag about how many facebook friends they had. Maybe this is something more common in junior high and high school, but in college, it's used as social interaction, not as a status symbol. At least in my experience.

Re:Quality vs Quantity

[dcam]

"Quantity has a quality all its own" - Josef Stalin

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

useful as an address book

[enos]

Facebook profiles tend to include cell phone numbers, emails and IM screennames. You can't look those up anywhere yet they're the best way to reach many people.

Re:useful as an address book

[CRCulver]

Too bad FOAF still hasn't taken off, then you could have the benefit of an address book you could reach at any time, but without the disadvantage of keeping it on a single site owned by a corporation that might just disappear down the line.

Re:useful as an address book

[enos]

FOAF looks too complicated for the vast majority of people. Nearly the entire population of universities are on Facebook, not just the CS department (who seem to dislike social networking anyway).

I'd rather have...

[Fyre2012]

... 5 good friends over 100+ 'Facebook' friends anyday.

Confirming your fears, or...

[rob1980]

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.

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 people. If you find yourself fearing for your social status a decade beyond high school, you still have some growing up to do.

Re:Confirming your fears, or...

[Sebastopol]

One of the funny things about self-image is that you don't see it head-on, the id doesn't allow it. Your response is a dead giveaway that you did care, and still do. See, you cared so little, that you went out of your way to tell the world you really don't care. Actions are more powerful than words you see.

Vicious thing, that subconscious ego...

Re:Confirming your fears, or...

[interval1066]

"Gee, I don't remember ever caring..."

Ok, we're talking about High School; if you didn't care, well, yeah, you're extra special. Special like the Korean who shot up those 30 people a month ago...

Not Psychology

[Miang]

What a disappointment, there wasn't anything 'psychological' about this analysis -- contrary to popular belief, mention of angst does not psychology make. :D

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 (though I don't believe it's published yet), and a couple of folks at Berkeley are studying online dating, but I haven't yet seen any good empirical research on Facebook and its ilk.

HTML problems with Slashdot

[hack slash]

Side tracking slightly but on the subject of HTML, how do I get Slashdot to fix theirs?
I've been given moderation points about 6 times now but haven't been able to use any of them because I'm using IE6 and trying to give a moderation point to someone just results in a javascript error (when error reporting is turned on). On a similar note, the main Slashdot logo at the top of each page isn't completely clickable, the search bar on the right invisibly overlaps the center of the main logo.
"Upgrade!" I hear you cry, but apart from this small problem I don't have any others whilst browsing so I have no real reason of going to IE7 (which I've used on other people's machines and don't particularly like) or a non-MS browser.

Re:HTML problems with Slashdot

[Red Flayer]

apart from this small problem I don't have any others whilst browsing so I have no real reason of going to IE7 (which I've used on other people's machines and don't particularly like) or a non-MS browser.

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 or the lack of tabbed browsing (a feature which I thought little of until I had grown used to using it). Having separate windows for each page I've got open now bugs the hell out of me, getting in the way while I work (or play) -- this is particularly true when I'm doing research online, when I need to have many different webpages open.

Re:HTML problems with Slashdot

[hack slash]

I often have up to 2 dozen IE windows open and don't have a problem keeping track of them, sure it's a lot of little buttons at the bottom of the screen but I'm running W2k and so there isn't the problem of slowness as with XP with it's fugly bloated GUI (yes I know you can 'rollback' the GUI on XP to look like 2k but I just don't like XP, it has that kid-gloves feel to it, like MS don't want you to have any real control over things).
From my experience of using tabs in browser windows is that it can get quite confusing, trying to remember which window has which sub-window in tab form, and I don't find IE7 as responsive as IE6 in regards to the tabs, especially as when you open a link in a new tab it re-orders the list of tabs just to help confuse things more. I've been using IE6 on this machine for well over 3 years, no antivirus or firewall software running on it (though there is a firewall on the ADSL router) and only once caught a nasty program which I admit was entirely my fault as I clicked on an obvious bad link - restored my setup from backup and didn't lose any data. Apart from that one mishap (the 2nd time I've ever caught something nasty on any of the PCs I've had in many many years of using Windows) I'm extremely careful what I click on and what sites I visit, too many people believe their antivirus & firewall software will save them when all too often it's their own stupidity/ignorance that causes them to end up having a fucked up PC (my brother makes some nice money from spyware removal).
So no, I don't think I'm in the wrong place, I'm just very dilligent in regards to using the internet.

Re:HTML problems with Slashdot

[Coopa]

All very similar to the problems i'm getting with IE6 too but i'm using a work pc where i have absolutely no choice but to use IE6.

At the moment i'm getting mod point almost weekly and i'm completely unable to use them, and the new comment system doesn't render at all and for some reason IE6 won't let me change it back to the old style for the times i read when i'm at work.

Re:HTML problems with Slashdot

[Extide]

Slashdot works fine in IE 6 or 7 for me, you just can't use the 'new discussion system.'
I usually use IE for almost everything, but tend to use Safari or Firefox for here because the new discussion system is SO much better.

Load of crap

[Orig_Club_Soda]

If I have a small number of friends, it might also mean that I don't accept every yahoo, porn star, band, and idiot out there.

However

[Arrmed]

While some might use facebook to booster their social status online, I find photo sharing and commenting is extremely nice- better than sending hordes of jpeg laden emails out, or using photobucket. Also When you don't haven unlimited roaming and your campus is far from home, the messenging old friends to see whats up cuts the phone bill down quite a bit.

You make a great point!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a great point. Let me add you to my Slashdot "friends" list! Oh, and be sure to friend me back!

Insecurity flies both ways

[AncientPC]

I don't have karma to spare but what the hell.

Instead of people bragging about their high friend count, everybody on /. brags about their low friend count. Isn't that just proving insecurity in another fashion? "Look how not insecure I am by having only 2 online friends!"

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!

Re:Insecurity flies both ways

[IdolizingStewie]

Or, even more astonishing, one might have both a few close friends and a large number of shallow acquaintances. The presence of one does not preclude the other. To me, much of the value in these social networking groups is the ability to check up on those people you don't know well enough to pick up the phone and call, but you still hope they're doing well. If I want to know what's going on in the life of a close friend, I'll call them, IM them, or just drop by.

Frankly, the only times I ever even hear people mention their friend count is bragging about a low one here on /.

Re:Insecurity flies both ways

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. People are getting hung up on this Friend Count thing. I don't know how many friends I have on Facebook and don't pay any attention to how many friends my friends have. It seems like an obviously stupid way of judging someone and its only the emotionally imature who would do it, be it glorying in many or few friends.

Just get over it and add anyone you know but don't dislike. If you're concerned about privacy use the limited profile option. Who knows maybe that person you had a conversation with about Gnome-centric circuit design will be able to get back in touch when opportunity presents itself.

Exactly

[Atroxodisse]

I didn't read the article and could have produced the exact same response except that I'm much more interested in not spending 10 minutes to write a response to a POS article. All I'm gonna say is I use Facebook to communicate with my friends, not to impress them and other random internet tards with my friend count.

Heck....

[StressGuy]

I didn't even read your comment...

meanwhile

[skotte]

I usually fFeel pretty lame and mediocre when I DO have hundreds of fFriends and a million pointless widgets on a social network.

Your experience: based on wrong-model thinking

[TechnicolourSquirrel]

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. Looking at all the comments it's pretty obvious that slashdotters just don't get Facebook. It's not a substitute for real life -- it IS real life. You don't do it instead of going out and meeting people, you go out and meet people *because* you did it. All of the whole canards about wasting time online do not apply to Facebook, anymore than talking to your friends on the phone or text messaging them, resulting in plans being made and gossip exchanged, etc., is an avoidance of real life. In fact, I was avoiding my real life *before* Facebook. Being on Facebook made my hermitude impossible. There are possible things to criticise with Facebook, but the oldtimers are choosing all the wrong targets. Really, who cares about friends list competitions? Keeping up with the Joneses is also a facet of real life -- so either tune out and drop out, or opt in and deal with the real, but make up your mind! and the real can be very shallow, if you think about wrong, that's one of its defining attributes -- a few months dissing the new online generation for being shallow, and how quickly we forget that all Tom and Bill talk about is their souped up motor vehicles and snowmobiles, and that's all theyre ever going to talk about no matter where you meet them, and superficial people will be superficial in any context. Facebook isn't going to turn your friends into the most sophisticated and charming group of people on the planet. It just puts you in touch with who they are, how they are -- always. Any criticism that involves normal human foibles in the exercise of materialism is a criticism of any multiparty communication system, not just Facebook. Get used to it, oldtimers, and stop underestimating, or you'll turn your heads and suddenly the world will be converted into something you thought you could safely discount as a joke. Not that the world will log onto Facebook, specifically. But the world online will inevitably become more and more like Facebook, because the big secret that is out among the youth now is that Tim Berners-Lee got it backwards. The most important people that you want to maintain a 'web presence' for *isn't* composed of a random collection of bloggers, academics, kooks, and general internet strangers waiting to snipe at you anonymously. The people you want to maintain a presence for are primarily your friends. No, people who dis Facebook as an avoidance of real life, when it's the first website in history that actually aims to bring your real life to the web, are getting it spectacularly, head-slappingly wrong.

Re:Your experience: based on wrong-model thinking

[Random832]

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.

Re:Your experience: based on wrong-model thinking

[TechnicolourSquirrel]

Sure, I suppose that could be better. Even better, I would want the option to direct people wherever I wish from a link to my profile that is rejected due not being within my circles of privacy. I should be able to redirect them to the specific public profile link, or to 404 them if I wish (because you know, some people choose not to give out their public profile link).

Re:Your experience: based on wrong-model thinking

[steevc]

Why do yo think they just passed 30 million 'members'? How many only joined so they could see a friend's profile and then never used it again?

I'm on FB with a mere 5 friends who I all know well IRL. There's plenty of others I know, but don't socialise with and so won't add.

They do have a few nice toys, but probably not much that other social sites don't offer. I've only played with a few. My favourite is http://www.multiply.com/ It's not so well known, but is very user friendly and offers easy control of access to your profile and posts.

Facebook -- your Privacy online?

[soren100]

One of the really interesting things about sites like Facebook is that people are putting all of their data into a massive interlinked network, which is both an advertiser's wet dream and the government's as well.

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 may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Facebook service through the operation of the service (e.g., photo tags) in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalized experience. So there is a profile of you in Facebook that you don't have access to, but also contains logs of chats that you have had from IM services that sold your chats to Facebook! Plus blog posts mentioning you and who knows what else -- that's pretty creepy.

The US government has let it be known that they want "Total Information Awareness" 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 , but Facebook itself also seems to have gotten its funding from people from people heavily involved in the CIA.

The CIA has also been very interested in student activities for decades. 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.

Re:Facebook -- your Privacy online?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait I'm getting a transmisson on my teeth fillings "*Bzzt* Do a background check on soren100"

Re:Facebook -- your Privacy online?

[chord.wav]

I get constant invitations to social networks from people I know, like trying to push me into them. Many of those sites even dare to ask my IM password, so I can "locate" friends already in the system. Can't believe people trust those sites better than a real person.
Everyday there's a new one. Even delicious looks bad for me. But I guess denying them all would turn some alarms on too, so if you really want to get out of the system, you better go to live to a distant forest or something truly off line.

640 friends ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... should be enough for anybody!

Difference between having a social life and not...

[michael.j.jarvis]

Ok, so maybe the subject needed work, but thats not what I'm good at. I canceled my own myspace profile, with probably about 150 "friends" because I got tired to reading pointless surveys and other useless bulletins. Also, it is an addiction of epic proportions as well. How many people do we know about in the world around us that are able to spend more than 10 minutes on a social networking site? Everyone asked why I canceled, and its simple: If my real friends really want to get in touch with me, they can email or call me. I've heard from about 10 of those ~150 "friends" in the 4 months since I canceled. Also, I don't want to traumatize my eyes and ears because someone can't use gmail or hotmail, and they just have to use myspace without a knowledge of HTML and a sense of sight and sound. I still have a facebook account, but unless I know you personally, and we're the type of friends that will go out for a beer after work, then don't fucking add me, because you don't know me, and I don't know you. If you want to be my friend, then talk to me offline, you know, in the real world.

Re:50 friends EXACTLY

[davidsyes]

In some of my profiles, I explicitly indicate I am NOT there to rack up insane and unmanagealbe numbers of so-called "friends". I find it mind-boggling and weird that people try to associate with and manage hundreds (even 150) friends they neither directly nor thru a close friend.

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 friends. I keep mine below 5 to 25 people. If Pac-Man friend-hunting people seethe or the sites bristle, tough shit.

Come on mods, now really

[soren100]

"Flamebait"?

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 well-supported. Slashdotters need to get bad karma from improper modding, not just from posting.

WTF is the author on?

[WillAffleckUW]

I have two groups on Facebook, Seminar Junkies, and Science Geeks (inherited the latter), and I limit my friends to people that I do stuff with.

The rest I have in the groups, it is way easier to keep track of.

Full article text?

[ilyakorea]

Is the full article text available? Also, this is my first post, having been a lurker for many years.

Re:Full article text?

[ilyakorea]

Ha. I got this article and today's article, [i]Nothing To Hide[/i], mixed up. The latter news piece requires registration. That's what happens when you have two Slashdot articles open at the same time.

enough ?

[Anonymous Coward]

640 friends should be enough for everybody

avoid it

[scolbert]

Isn't the simple solution to avoid Facebook all together?

Sammy at Personafile

Facebook is upper class

[ghoul]

Given that Facebook started out in colleges and only slowly let the proles in there is a certain snob value to being on facebook as opposed to myspace. Besides Platform really rocks. Its the first time I have been tempted to spend my own time to create software for free.

Post to Facebook

[sinistre]

Where is the post to my Facebook profile button for this article?

Urgh

[Anonymous Coward]

These reports are pathetic. The level of seriousness accomadated to these social networking sites is pathetic. People who take it so seriously need to get laid more.

Still don't get it

[jackhererUK]

I have never really understood what the point of these social networking sites are, and i can't say I'm really any the wiser for reading the article. It just gives a number of reasons why facebook is better than other social networking sites but does not touch on why anybody bothers with them at all. I participate in community discussion sites like Slashdot and Digg because they provide insight into subjects that interest me but i do not form online relationships with any of the members of these sites. I have actual friends who I interact with in the actual real world why would anyone want to create faux relationships with with strangers on websites. Ironically i think if find trying to work out why these sites are so popular more engaging and interesting than the sites themselves.

Sad

[Anonymous Coward]

It's sad that people need to have a big list of online "friends" (are they really? can you count on them?) to feel validated. Guess what, that means you are SHALLOW. If you have no identity of your own, stop visiting Falsebook NOW and go try to develop one. Start by asking yourself why the approval of others should be important to you.

Wow, such hostility

[InadequateCamel]

Maintaining contact with more than a handful of people through sites like Facebook does not make ALL of your friendships trite and meaningless. Some people can maintain a close circle of friends with a larger casual circle, or (as someone else pointed out) just a large circle of casual friends, by choice. Do you people mean to tell me that you call your close circle of friends every day to find out what's going on in their lives? Of course not. Friends update friends about their other friends all the time, and that's how FB works.

FB is basically a passive form of Messenger, but with more information and a far better way of making new contacts. Thanks to FB I have reestablished contact with people whom I haven't spoken to in years. It keeps you updated on the lives of your friends without having to call every one of them or visit them in foreign countries. It's also a convenient way to get in touch with your good friends and organize parties. You know, with your REAL friends, in meatspace.

Sure, some people treat FB as a big "friend"-gathering contest, and some people don't; that's their choice. If it bothers you, then please ask yourself (a) why you are checking how many friends these people have, and (b) why you are interacting with people who piss you off? If TFA can be crudely summarized as "Anyone with lots of friends only does it to increase their level of status" then the majority of the comments seem to be "Casual circle of friends or larger number of friends than me = bad", and neither is correct.

Insecurity veiled in indignant hostility? On /.? What is the world coming to?

Re:Wow, such hostility

[Anonymous Coward]

You seemed to have missed the point somewhat, and you are just backlashing at those being critical of something you're clearly a fan of. It's an emotive response in itself.

Ofcourse networking sites can be used to keep in contact with people and re-contact people you haven't in quite a while, but the real issue is that it becomes peoples primary medium for communication.

Communication via the internet is great for exchanging ideas, and even shooting off emails like people did with letters originally or even using it to organise plans with a group of friends, it can also be used for quick yarns via IMs, or even the occasional catch up with old friends, but the weight of importance you seem to hold for it, and the reliance on it as a means to achieve these things would seem to indicate a lack of real-life social skills, or the degredation of skills you may have once had, and that in itself is a legitimate problem.

Re:Wow, such hostility

[InadequateCamel]

I'm afraid you have missed the point. My point is that using such a social networking site does not automatically lead to a "degredation in skills" in interacting with friends and that it has many legitimate uses. Another point of mine was that nearly every comment posted above was a very negative one; I hardly see how offering an opposing view indicates the "weight of importance" I hold for the site. I made no mention of how often I use it or how many friends I have on the site, with the latter being the main thrust of this poorly researched paper in the first place.

So that's "backlashing"? Please. I said the site is more useful than a number of inexplicably-angry /. users want to admit. I didn't say I can't live without it. Try jumping to a few less conclusions before clicking "Submit" next time.

Strangers list

[Anonymous Coward]

There should also be a "Strangers" list, to counteract random broadcasters. Getting on 200 Friends lists would be somewhat offset by being on 2,000 Strangers lists.

Welcome to /.

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to Slashdot, user number 1126423, where you instantly have over 1126421 friends.

social network changes

[kc333]

I use Myspace regularly just as a means to keep in touch with my friends overseas. It's a nice little medium. I do understand the points being made about status symbols and the whole 'fakeness' and facade of some people on these sites. In a sign of definace I once altered my 'numnber of friends' to something like 74389473857348! I was popular for a day!

Social networking seems to be changing so quickly with emerging technologies looking to move one step ahead of the often limited scope of myspace, facebook, bebo etc. I came across this really cool site the other day called MyCyberTwin which is combining the whole idea of social networking with chat based technology.

You create your own 'cybertwin', give it a personality and teach it to talk and behave like you. Other people can then chat to it 24hrs a day. You can even embed these twins into other social networking sites like Myspace and MSN. It's something different and seems to be taking off. Would you create a twin that is (a) just like you (b) nothing like you (c) somewhere in between. These answers could lead to an understanding of what people are actually looking for in these social networking sites! Something to look out for perhaps?

kc

CIA and Microsoft as partners? Well done Facebook

[Anonymous Bullard]

I turned down an invitation after reading their terms, policy and a Fortune article that they proudly touted on their homepage.

Throw in a bunch of typical private investor types and a megalomaniac boy-wonder CEO and they've got all the "right" boxes checked.