You have probably heard of facebook, a so-called "social networking" site. But you may not imagine why you'd want to use it yourself if, like me, you're well beyond the typical under-30 facebook user. After spending a little time as a user, I've found some compelling aspects of the service which provide benefits not otherwise available with previous paradigms (i.e., email, instant messaging, blogs, personal Web pages).
Most of all, what you might find surprising and appealing is that FB provides a kind of "firewall" between you and the world, despite the "social" nature of the site.
A little over a year ago, I created a facebook account with the intention of seeing how social networking sites worked. After initially finding 5 or 6 people (by having FB search my email address book), I never got back to spend time with the site. Four or five months ago, one of the people who I had "friended" wrote me a question through facebook. I was inspired to try a new search of my contacts to see whether there were more people I knew, and the list grew to something like 15 or 16. At this point, I have still have only a couple of dozen "Friends," but that's been enough to finally get a sense of what the site has to offer.
Facebook was initially available only to Harvard University students, where its founders were enrolled. Over time, it grew to allow any student, then (apparently as these students graduated but continued to want the site's services) to anyone over 13 years of age. It's generally acknowledged that FB was a response to MySpace, a social networking site which has famously become the domain of "tweenies."
Here are just some of facebook's features (the ones I've noticed):
Most of all, what you might find surprising and appealing is that FB provides a kind of "firewall" between you and the world, despite the "social" nature of the site.
A little over a year ago, I created a facebook account with the intention of seeing how social networking sites worked. After initially finding 5 or 6 people (by having FB search my email address book), I never got back to spend time with the site. Four or five months ago, one of the people who I had "friended" wrote me a question through facebook. I was inspired to try a new search of my contacts to see whether there were more people I knew, and the list grew to something like 15 or 16. At this point, I have still have only a couple of dozen "Friends," but that's been enough to finally get a sense of what the site has to offer.
Facebook was initially available only to Harvard University students, where its founders were enrolled. Over time, it grew to allow any student, then (apparently as these students graduated but continued to want the site's services) to anyone over 13 years of age. It's generally acknowledged that FB was a response to MySpace, a social networking site which has famously become the domain of "tweenies."
Here are just some of facebook's features (the ones I've noticed):
- FRIEND FINDING
- Like all social networking sites, their goal is for users to find other users. To that end, the inital steps in creating a new (free) account encourage you to search for friends already on the site. FB (and other sites) provides a tool to search through your email addresses within popular email sites (AOL, Gmail, Yahoo, MSN, etc.) and informs you whether any site members' are in your contact list.
- As another vector for connecting with others you may know, FB maintains a database of existing schools. If you choose to fill in your educational information, your exact school will auto-fill as you type. Consequently, you will be presented with "people you may know" lists which match educational and professional institutions.
- You can optionally associate yourself with one geographical region defined as a "network." This also allows others to more easily identify you.
- PRIVACY
- Many of you choose to be private about your online presence. This is completely understandable. A cool thing about facebook is that unless your accept someone as a "friend," you can severely restrict how much anyone can know about you. At a minimum, you reveal only:
- Your name
- An "Add as Friend" button
- A "Send a Message" button
- A "View Friends" button
- If anyone presses any of the buttons, you are privately sent an email informing you of the request, which you can choose to accept or decline. Your true identity and email address remain secret, unless you choose otherwise.
- You can choose to display an image - presumably of yourself. A single tiny thumbnail is all that is viewable to non-friends.
- Optionally, you can display more information - email addresses, geographic region, schools, etc.
- FRIENDS
- Once you have accepted another user as a "Friend," your personal profile information is now visible to that person. The profile can be as elaborate as you wish, including photo and video albums, favorites lists, and any facebook "applications" you choose to install.
- Once you have "friended" someone, you will be provided with opportunities to review their Friends to see if you know them, so you can add them as Friends.
- Friends can see thumbnails of profile images provided by your other Friends.
- A very cool example of a fundamental FB feature is that if you upload a photograph, you can click on any point in the photo and type an identification of that person in the photo.If they are Friends, their FB name will automatically appear as you type. As a result:
- ...when others view your photos, they can see location-specific captions of every person in the photo
- ...any photos you have tagged as a facebook user automatically appear in that user's Photos space. Very slick.
- COMMUNICATIONS
- In addition to being able to send text messages between users, FB has some great ideas for less-demading ways of interacting with other users:
- News Feed - A profound aspect of FB, the News Feed appears by default on your FB "landing page." Depending upon the privacy settings your friends have made, you can see some or all of all your friend's FB activity in a continuous list of exchanges. These reported activities include:
- Adding Friends
- Removing Friends(!)
- Making changes to one's profile
- Adding photos
- Having/making comments on photos/text
- Actions taken in facebook Applications (more below)
- Poking - At many locations on FB where you can see lists of Friends, a "Poke (Friend's name)" button is typically provided. Clicking this simply sends a "You have been poked by (Friend's name)" message and an opportunity to poke back. I like this as a way of saying "I'm thinking of you," but not having to invest time or energy in an actual topic. Third-party applications like "pillow fights" and "food fights" provide alternative wordless interaction fun.
- Wall Writing - Every user has a personal "wall," on which their friends can write. This provides a person-to-person note with the tacit understanding that no response is expected.
- I really like these mechanisms. For years, I've been looking for an alternative to email for sharing information with others without the expectation of a response.
- SHARING STUFF
- There are myriad ways to share photos and video, as well as URLs and just text.
- APPLICATIONS
- These are online services which do anything, from communicating, to creating quizzes and surveys to playing games. I've only installed two:
- TravelBrain - Lets the user populate a world map with "pins" of locations they've visited, and shares/compares this information with other users.
- Movies - Lets users discuss and rate motion pictures.
- Two examples of extremely popular "fluffy" FB Apps are the various "pillow fight" and "karma" apps, which allow users to "hit" other users with pillows and "send" karmic wishes.
- Here is facebook's Application Directory.
- EMAIL ALERTS
Update 3/3/2009
Since I wrote this original post back in September 2008, I've observed a noticeable rise in the use of facebook. Whenever I happen to have facebook search my email address book for users, there are always new matches - not because I've added those people to my address book, but because those people have joined facebook. Most significantly, the "over 50" demographic of my facebook friends continues to increase, so apparently the compulsion of family and friend users is continuing to cause growth in the user base.
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