Facebook is becoming a beacon of what most social web sites aspire to become – large, successful, entertaining and sticky. Users sign up, fuck around and stick around for hours. Some of them to their own malaise.
But is all this Facebook time healthy?
And just like the rise of big tobacco or McDonalds, their products are designed to addict you. Each new facet of Facebook (the little game apps, the toy-like flirting, the wall and news feeds) fire up a desire to be a narcissist and return again and again. Some users know when they are taken for a rid and quit, like Carmen Joy King, who finally canceled her account on Facebook after it eroded much of her time trying to “become too clever on Facebook”. (1)
Many long time social web users feel the enthrall of being able to create a weblinks to friends, or post pictures of themselves that are humorous. Most users cannot actually set up their own websites or handle the extra complexities of writing HTML, the native format of the web. Facebook is an easy way to publish oneself as is youTube. You don’t need to know a whole lot about HTML formats, server issues, video encodings or player versions. You log in and post.
Problem is, you have to post in a rigid environment. A place designed to bring you back again and again, like that cigarette that tastes soo good. How did they design this Marlboro to be so smooth and warming? Why are you logging into Facebook everyday, obsessively tweaking your profile or other fake profiles? Looking full-blown Facebook addiction in the eye, is an ugly business.
Personally, while I believe that it maybe useful to have a Facebook page reserved, I do not use Facebook. It’s important to understand Facebook for in part for what it is– a company that wants to grow. And to do so they will inject additives into your psyche to keep you coming back for more. It’s stickiness is partial-attentive and works to addict, not to inform. While a larger, McDonalds ($65 Billion) would have loved to have the growth rate that the privately held Facebook ($15 Billion) has enjoyed in the past five years. Both have sticky products that make their users yearn. What is Facebook’s future? Have they predicted a few models, and are their managers are working hard to make it happen. Likewise, the managers at Rupert Murdoch’s little division MySpace – of News Corp. ($26 Billion) – have also envisioned a future for themselves (2.)
What are the costs to the pysche of a young person? The wise David Byrne has some thoughts on this. (3.)
And what is your vision for yourself, and your future? How are you moving your life forward?
Facebook matures, turns to addicting users
Facebook has seemed to learn some lessons from “Big Tobacco” and have is actively designing their products to be sticky and addictive. And the buzz is clear: “if everyone is doing it, you should be as well.”
There must be some research on the types of addictive personalities that Facebook and youTube profile and cater to their needs. I would be interested in any links to these. And i’d be interested in learning how these sites, encourage obsessive compulsive behaviors. For example, if a new user begins to learn Facebook/youTube, what changes do they undergo? How does their usage patterns change int eh first few months of being a member? What are the trends? How does Facebook attack the problem of user attrition? They must understand why people leave the site, and it would be pragmatic for them to address this with a tool or tickler email to encourage users to come back. For example, a user must log in to get a Facebook message sent to you, it will not be forwarded directly to your email. Talk about inconvenient.
Facebook and the hip alerts
And it must be the perfect storm of clicking and updating, for an addictive user that owns a web enabled phone. Imagine getting a fresh update on your phone while sitting on a shitter, or in a meeting or on a bus. Fast phone updates, could just interrupt your private thoughts and bring you back to you Facebook profile in no time. That’s progress.
This summer, I recently checked out Facebook’s growth and a few other social sites, mostly for abusive behaviors and to quietly acquire a lot of evidence for a police report. But I’ve no real need to use these sites on a regular basis.
Surely some of technology on Facebook is liberating. Smoking tobacco is also relaxing, and while I don’t smoke, I can understand that drug’s affect on people that I know who do smoke. Facebook online chatter is a freeing format for people, but also addictive to a narcissistic generation.
To post information of yourself and to share it is clearly human nature. We all wish to be known. But the Facebook model is devolving into a miniature CIA-like human reification program. Profiles are profiles, data is data, and forever it shall be. And this encourages its users to see people in a similar objectively fashion.
However, and hopefully, we are also witnessing a general change to this human sophistication as well, The more people use these technologies, the more we understand that behind those hard looking profiles thrum fluctuating humans– difficult to reify and to even track in a real-sense. Many people are also gaining the ability to read these profiles for what they are.
Well. There are too many other technologies that are better suited to a normal non-intrusive relationship with the people I know. Face to face — being my absolute favorite.
I would suggest to those people suffering from addictions to Facebook, youTube and other tweaky sites that you start experimenting with limiting your TV-time to a few hours a week. You can do so much better things for this world, than log back into Facebook.
Soo….
Eat fresh foods, and curb or eliminate your McDonalds food intake.
Likewise, limit your Facebook/MySpace/YouTube online time and start socializing with people face to face.
You are more powerful than your compulsive clicking, and you can make a difference in this world.
Remember, that life can get better… and is better f2f than online.
Until next time,
Holden Smith
(1.)
Quit Facebook — Carmen Joy King opts out
(2.)
Myspace, the Sequel — Fast Company, Ellen McGirt
(3.)
Make Believe Mambo — David Byrne
