Tuesday, July 10, 2007; Posted: 4:46 AM - by John Kirriemuir
Facebook has been getting a lot of UK press of late, from consideration of how much it is worth, to privacy issues, universities getting annoyed at students using it to criticize staff, being censored by organizations frightened of it, and the musings of BBC journalists about whether people are too “old” to Facebook.
What makes Facebook such an attraction? Some theories…
1: Collecting
It's like Top Trumps and Pokemon and stamp collecting, in that it taps into the basic psyche of collecting things. As the collection of "Friends" grows, so it is like having a larger stamp collection, with an increasing feeling of achievement.
"My stamp collection contains 10 stamps" is nothing. "My stamp collection contains 2,000 stamps" perhaps gives a feeling of achievement, a tangible result and evidence of work and persistence.
To give your collection a bit more personalization, you can optionally agree with your friends how you met and add on other bits of information, write on their profile wall, and so on. So you aren't just remembering and "collecting" friends, but collecting relationships between people. (That sounds a bit woolly – just play with Facebook and it'll make more sense).
2: Not invited to the party
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.
Yes, Facebook could cause a lot of angst to the paranoid amongst us ;-)
3: Twitching curtains
"Curiosity" – and its cousin "nosiness" – are basic cognitive attributes. Anyone who says they are never nosey or never curious as to what their neighbours or work colleagues are up to is probably fibbing. Having lived in several small communities, where gossip is an alternative currency, the general rule seems to be "most residents discuss most other residents". Though, in many ways, this is preferable to the anonymity of the city, where people often live next door to dead people for weeks or months at a time without realising.
Facebook is up-front about letting you keep an eye on what your friends are up to. There's a status box. You type in – if you want – what you are doing. There's another page where the most recent updated status of your friends are listed; here's a screenshot of a good example. Currently, of my peers, Dan is off to Paris, Tom has just completed a half-marathon in 2 hours 10 minutes, David in Lewis is bottling his home-made wine, and Jenny has finally bought a house. Utterly meaningless to you (unless you are my evil twin or stalker), but of interest to me. The same way that your friends are of no interest to me but of much interest to you.
4: People like us
It's a social network for what my cousin calls "the deadwood" – basically, everyone over 30. The demographics for new users registering show an accelerating rise in people from 35 onwards signing up (this slide from an interesting bundle of Facebook stats slides):
I'm 38. When I use Facebook I don't occasionally look at a person's profile and think, with total dismay, "I'm old enough to be your father." That's happened to me in MySpace. And that's partially why I've given up on Bebo, as it's not far off the point of thinking "I'm old enough to be your grandfather." How depressing would that be?
No, there is a generational thing there, and I'm more comfortable with peers who are very roughly within my age range. The birthday/age feature on Facebook tells me the youngest friend I have is 25 (four of them) and the oldest is 74. If you are too young to remember life under Thatcher – and worryingly, this year's University intake will contain that generation – then we probably aren't going to be discussing politics anyway. And I'm not going to turn into one of the dull people who turn up at every village meeting and start their sentences with "In my day…". No, 25 to 74 is fine.
5: Autobiography
Once you've linked up with a few people, then Facebook creates a "Social Timeline." This shows when and who and why you ended up meeting with Facebook people. As an aide memoire, this has been unexpectedly interesting, showing that I did a heck of a lot of networking (that led to people I'm still in touch with) at certain jobs, but not at others. It also shows that for the couple of years after I went self-employed, I did hardly any networking as I was busy being a part-time tourist. (That's what happens when you live between two airports which host several budget airlines, and you don't have to book time off work).
6: Expansion is quick, easy and free
I like Wordpress, as a blogging and website development tool, as plug-ins are being created all the time to add functionality. A bit of FTPing, and a variable amount of fiddling, and often – though not always – another dimension has been added to a website or blog.
However, Facebook is simpler.
Adding new functionality is done within Facebook – no FTPing, or messing about with files or directories. It takes literally seconds, which means that an application of interest can be very quickly experimented with. Several times I've installed, played with, and uninstalled applications in under 2 minutes. Therefore, it appeals to people who like to tinker and experiment, but don't have the time, inclination, knowledge, attention span or geekiness to mess about with anything technical.
So what of rival services? Will Facebook knock 'em out of the market place? One in particular is possibly doomed in the long-term: Friends Reunited.
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