On Facebook’s Identity Crisis
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | October 11, 2007 | Share This
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In a recent New York Times op-ed entitled “The Fakebook Generation,” Dartmouth grad Alice Mathias lays out what she thinks Facebook is really all about, or at least what it once was about: putting on an act for the people you already know. She writes:
Facebook did not become popular because it was a functional tool — after all, most college students live in close quarters with the majority of their Facebook friends and have no need for social networking. Instead, we log into the Web site because it’s entertaining to watch a constantly evolving narrative starring the other people in the library.
Like Mathias’s, my Facebook membership (or addiction?) goes way back to those early days when everyone’s favorite “social utility” was really just a cross-college, online yearbook, its main functions simple: cheeky wall-writing, a sneaky way to see who was dating whom, and a semi-private place to post party photos.
Obviously, with the introduction of people besides college students, the open API, the creation of about ten jillion applications, and the multi-billion-dollar valuations, those simple days are long over. The new Facebook seems to be abandoning its student-group values to usher in Google-like domination of the social data universe… or so notes Wired editor Fred Vogelstein in his recent LA times op-ed. Vogelstein’s ideas about how users actually use the site seem diametrically opposed to Mathias’s. He writes (emphasis mine):
If you don’t know what a Facebook page is, well, that’s what it is: Your contact information, your picture, an e-mail in-box and a compendium of your likes and dislikes, all — and this is critical — verified by your friends and typically only viewable by them. You can easily create a fake identity on Facebook, or a real identity with fake credentials. But you either end up with no friends or get called out for lying. This is a big distinction between MySpace and Facebook — for the moment.
So who’s right? How do users actually use Facebook? Are profiles a sincere, perhaps even literal, representation of each user just waiting to be mined by marketers, like Vogelstein seems to suggest, or is Mathias correct in saying that Facebook’s just a place to goof off with your friends?
I’m going to have to disagree with Vogelstein on the “verified by your friends” and “get called out for lying” points regarding core Facebook users. I’m guessing that none of Vogelstein’s non-married friends have ironically “married” each other on Facebook, that no one in his network has ever changed their Facebook profile to read like song lyrics, and that he may not have any friends with a picture of Severus Snape as their profile photo. But that sort of play is pretty common among “old school” users of the site.
As Mathias correctly points out, regardless of the new business audience, half the fun for my demographic remains inside jokes and fakery. Some might argue that this is a way to subvert and circumvent behaviorally-targeted marketing invading the News Feeds, but I don’t think anyone on Facebook is quite so concerned (yet) about the encroaching marketing presence.
On the other hand, Vogelstein aptly notes that Facebook’s most rapidly growing audience is “older” users (read: tech bloggers) , who approach Facebook with a more business-oriented outlook. Vogelstein writes:
The fastest-growing age group on Facebook is over 35, representing 11% of its users. And it is clear from talking to Zuckerberg that he thinks everyone on the planet can — and should — have a Facebook page. His vision is Googilian? Microsoftian? Intergalactic? Choose your word. He wants Facebook to become the biggest, most valuable database in the world — the database of human likes and dislikes or, as author John Battelle likes to say, “the database of intentions.”
With the influx of an older demographic, will Facebook become a home for business-worthy activity? Scott Karp thinks not:
“The issue is that so many ‘adults’ fell for Facebook’s ploy to convince them that they should adopt a toy built for college kids as a platform for their professional networking objectives. The deep irony is that Facebook’s core student users — for whom the application was and still is designed — are laughing at the grown-ups as they bumble around the playground, trying to hold meetings in the sandbox and forge new business relationships on the swings. “
But, instead of laughing in the presence of all these “real grown-ups” and their largely irony-free, unfunny, and often barely filled out profiles (you know who you are), the core Facebook group, the first waves of which have already graduated, might take a look at how their own behavior has adapted as their bosses, parents, and professors have joined the site.
Robert Scoble writes:
How will we know that the discovery phase of Social Networking is over? When we stop seeing these kinds of stupid rifts. Do we argue about whether it’s young or old or cool or smart to use a business card? No, I had them in college. I have them now. Never even thought of arguing about that. Someday we’ll just use Facebook and we’ll all get along. Until then, phhhhhhhhbbbbbttttttt to all you college students who think I’m ruining Facebook!
To that, I think that instead of arguing whether or not Facebook is being invaded or over-hyped, we might realize that Facebook is big enough for us all. Facebook continues to thrive because it offers a unique blend of innovation, versatility and yes, even privacy. The nuances of how different age groups interact within the site are determined more by existing social norms than by Facebook itself.
Topics: Facebook, Social Media |
Hi Sepideh-
My company, Travelzoo Inc., has a Facebook group page. This project was spearheaded by the subscription acquisition department. The goal of our page was to a)provide a unique travel deal group/feed b)get people to sign up for our Top 20 newsletter (published every Wednesday at 11 AM EST). We’ve found great pockets of success and are continuing to pump money into this endeavor. As a viable marketing initiative, we’re still exploring the opportunities availabe to us and have only scratched the surface. Let me know if you want some insider info as fodder for another post!
Thanks,
Paul