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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.'"
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.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
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.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
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!
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.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
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".
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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.
"But this one goes to 11!"
I don't have karma to spare but what the hell.
/. 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!"
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!