A researcher's perspective

To broaden my perspective on non-collegiates’ uses of Facebook, I interviewed (via email) Devan Rosen. A member of the Department of Speech at the University of Hawaii in Manoa, Professor Rosen has researched the impact of media consumption on social networking site (SNS) behavior, as well as cultural trends in user behavior. He is currently looking at the means by which people negotiate available resources via SNS and other Web 2.0 technologies.

HG: From your studies or observations, what can you say about uses of Facebook by non-collegiates?

DR: They use them very similarly to non-collegiates. The Internet has revolutionized the way that we interact with information, and transformed the way we each communicate with other. Instead of the antiquated injection model of media, media companies are harnessing the interactivity of communication technologies to bring the audience into the experience.

HG: Are there overall trends worth noting?

DR: Well, regarding the notion of “private,” there are some interesting trends, especially a willingness to participate in non-directed self-disclosure. I think it is more related to a rethinking of what it means to be “private.” If someone does not think that sharing intimate details of their day-to-day experiences in a blog is an invasion of their privacy, then it is not related to being shy. They still may be shy, but don’t consider the information to be private, thus not violating the context that they would normally be “shy” in.

Our findings do support the relationship between consumption of socially rewarding reality television and the likelihood to engage in what we call “promiscuous friending”, as well as engage in other Web 2.0 applications like sharing photos of oneself online. Promiscuous friending is where a social networking site (SNS) user accepts someone as a friend that they have not actually met. In this situation a stranger now has access to the private content of your personal SNS page as well as their other friends’ personal SNS site.

HG: Are non-collegiates most likely to be using the website for socializing, games, professional networking, and/or other functions?

DR: In most cases using SNS and other Web 2.0 applications augment physical interactivity by allowing users to keep closer connections to their weak ties, or people that are not close friends and family, rather that replacing physical with intellectual. It is easy to loose touch with people in ones social network that are not strong ties, so having access to communication technologies that assist in the maintenance of weak ties allows us to utilize a larger portion of our social network, at a much lower time and effort “cost.”

These technologies are providing a much richer toolbox for us to maintain, plan, and keep track of our social lives. In turn we are becoming much better at knowing how to utilize our social network to gain access to resources, from travel recommendations to emotional support. Every individual in our social networks represents a resource, and having a cogent knowledge of how to enable those resources makes us more successful social beings.

HG: Major advertisers have taken note of Facebook and begun placing ads, creating groups or product pages, etc. In your opinion, are these effective?

DR: Yes. People can now target, with remarkable specificity, the consumers that they need to reach. Then these sites allow for a viral spread of product support.

HG: Politicians have also taken note of Facebook and created groups or profile pages. News media articles will occasionally note the size of one candidate's page vs. her/her opponent's. In your opinion, besides the PR value, are these pages having a substantial effect?

DR: Traditionally, media content is the product of media companies, but new user-created and user-focused online platforms such as wikis, blogs, social networking sites, and media sharing sites allow for an increased notion of individual media ownership, and thus personal investment in media content. This makes the big wigs very, very nervous; those who control content control culture, and there is big money on controlling culture, as well as political discourse.

HG: Anything else you can tell me on this topic?

DR: SNS are allowing people to find solidarity with those that they have affiliations with, from sailing groups to displaced refugees. It is this sort of self-organization that is where the Internet shines. If we are indeed only a few degrees of separation from every other person on the planet, being able to navigate the small world becomes the conundrum. The Internet is the roadmap to the small world. We can find those that are like us, but can also discover those that are not. The Internet enables global awareness.

Mistakes magnified

Apparently one major effect of Facebook is that it enables non-collegiates to embarrass themselves or their peers to wider audiences, with greater ease.

An education reporter at the Vancouver Sun in Canada reported on a small Facebook-aided brouhaha in the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows school district. For some reason, one of the school trustees rested his head on his arms during a district parent advisory council meeting. The vice chair of the council took a photo, posted it on Facebook, and titled it: “Paperless board meeting, $25,000. Trustee asleep … priceless.” The school board put out a release later, claiming that the board member was not asleep at the meeting.

You’ve got to wonder about two things here – the common sense (or lack thereof) a council vice chair who posts an unflattering photo of a colleague on a widely popular social networking site and the wisdom of the school board, which increased the visibility of the posting by issuing a news release.

The Herald Sun, “Australia’s biggest selling daily newspaper” (so they say), ran a story on October 10th about a newsreader at the 3AW radio station who failed to show up on time to read the news. She told management that she had ‘computer problems’ but when the IT dept. investigated they found that she was using Facebook at the time.

I mentioned in a posting two weeks ago about the English cad who left his wife for an old flame who he reunited with on Facebook. The ex-wife discovered Facebook’s role in the sorry saga by reading a Wall posting between her ex and the old/new lover. Her ex is a quite sloppy and insensitive fellow, if you ask me.

In late September Salon.com posted a long article entitled “Old people Facebook disasters.” In the article Michael Martin shares a number of tales that make you want to wince on behalf of the subjects. In one a 30-year-old filmmaker went to delete a potty- humor video that someone else posted on her Wall. She accidentally hit ‘Forward’ instead and Facebook sent the video to all her Facebook friends. Ouch!

In another story a 37 year old mom reacted quickly to a news story about then new VP nominee Sarah Palin and her pregnant daughter, posting in her status update that she “feel less of a woman that I have never slept with a Levi or a hockey player.” It occurred to her afterwards that all her Friends, including her 13-year-old nephew, could see her snarky comment.

Why are all these seemingly sensible people, with important responsibilities, committing such glaring gaffes on Facebook?

I surmise that for some, it may simply be a lack of familiarity with the features of the service and what they really do. Others may be careless, no matter what communication medium they use. For some, though, the explanation may be youth-envy. As Salon.com’s Martin explains: “Starved of the sociosexual drama of their teens and 20’s, people over 30 are eager to join the confessional zeitgist and thus become careless.” I think Martin makes a good point.

Two more case studies

In the interest of investigating how non-collegiates use Facebook ‘in real life,’ I sent two personal associates – one, a friend in my community and the other, a business contact – a few questions about their use of Facebook.

I asked:
1)Do you use Facebook for work (either for job tasks or professional networking)? If so, how? Is it useful?
2)Do you use Facebook to stay in touch with close friends? If yes how? Is it useful?
3)Do you use Facebook to re-establish contact w/old friends? If yes, how? Is Facebook better than other methods for this?
4)How else do you use Facebook?

Here’s what I learned.

Julie McGee Verbaro is the vice president for sales at a printing company based in northern New Jersey. She wrote:

I only use Facebook for social reasons only. For networking I would use LINKED-IN (I think that's what its called). I am on that but hardly ever use it.

I love finding old friends from college and keeping in touch with current friends on day to day stuff - love looking at photos and letting them know what is new with me instead of emailing everyone. it's a one stop shop!

I have also been contacted by friends of friends and now I am close with them too. It’s really fun.

I send birthday cards on Facebook so now I don't forget friend’s birthdays, I try out some of the quizzes and am learning about more features each time I go on.

Avi Mandelbaum works for a local outlet of a major national pharmacy chain. He wrote:

No I haven't used Facebook for my regular job. However, when I was working last year as Youth Director (of a local synagogue), I was able to create a Facebook group only for the synagogue’s youth. This group was very helpful getting information about events to our target demographic. It was much easier than calling, and more effective than mail because of the automatic reminders facebook has.

I don't use it for staying in touch with close friends. Close friends get phone calls, and face to face treatment. While I do communicate over Facebook with my close friend, I wouldn't say it is to "stay in touch."

I've been able to find many friends from Elem. School, High School, Yeshiva (religious school) in Israel, and my college days, and my days in N.C.S.Y. (National Council of Synagogue Youth – a synagogue –based youth program for teenagers). I wouldn't have found them any other way. I find them by looking through lists of friends of people who I'm already friends with, and just searching for people wondering what they're up to. I do think it's preferable because I, and they, can post life cycle events (children, birthdays and the such) and keep large amounts of people in the loop. Without that, calling everyone would take too long, mailing letters or cards too expensive. E-mail could do the same, but you wouldn't have a way to find everyone's e-mail address. Also, with the "news feed" you can keep up on status updates from friends, and are able to know what they've got going on, and the other way around. It's really nice.

I use some of the games, movie trivia, parking wars, and I also use the photo posting sections. Most of these are to simply allow my friends to know what's going on in my life, and in the life of my family.

what news reports tell us

In the interest of tracking news coverage of Facebook as it pertains to non-collegiates, I set up a Google News Alert. One of the first things I’ve learned is that Facebook, in general, gets lots of press attention – my Google Alert delivers a regular news round-up of news articles, blog entries, and press releases about Facebook – perhaps 10-12 new items each day.

Many of these alerts do not pertain directly to non-collegiate uses of Facebook. But a significant number do address the topic.

A story in the Detroit Free Press, “Offering easy dialogue, Facebook gets rush of users over 35,” reports that Facebook has surpassed MySpace and become the leading social networking website worldwide, attracting 150 million users. According to this story 46% of Facebook users are 35 or older.

One popular use of Facebook is for re-establishing social contacts. A columnist in the Home News Tribune (L. Granieri, 10/2/08 - available for a fee) wrote about how she drifted apart from a close friend in college and then got back in touch with her over Facebook. They recently got together for lunch, for three hours (that’s some lunch).

A blogger on the US News & World Report website shared the heartwarming account of a young professional in CT who created a Facebook group, to collect stories from former students of his mom, a soon-to-retire school teacher. The group has over 300 members. And in the less than savory dept., the Mirror of Great Britain reports that an English gent used Facebook to contact his high school sweetheart and then promptly left his wife of five years for her. His jilted spouse has formed an “I hate (name of old girlfriend)” Facebook group, which has 28 members.

What these three stories illustrate, I believe, is that social contacts that people pursued for generations have become easier through Facebook. Human nature is to be sentimental at certain stages in our lives; Facebook allows us to act on those impulses with greater speed and effectiveness. Sometimes the results are heart-warming, other times heart-breaking.

Another growing area of Facebook use is for work related activities. The Democrat Chronicle of Rochester, NY reports that Paychex, Verizon Wireless, and Bausch and Lomb are using Facebook to recruit new personnel. A story in CNET News online reveals that Great Britain’s secret service, the M16, is placing ads on Facebook seeking new recruits. They’ve also formed a Facebook group that has over 700 members.

The Detroit Free Press article highlights one young professional, a party promoter, who spends 16 hours a day on the site working to drum up interest in the latest place-to-be-seen. The Democrat-Chronicle article also relates the efforts of Kodak to promote their latest products and company news on Facebook.

So companies are using Facebook to reach out to young people of college age and a little older, to promote products or professional opportunities. What remains to be seen is if established businesses are or will soon be using Facebook to reach the growing segment of Facebook users who more than a couple years past college age.

A Case Study

As part of my inquiry into Facebook uses by non-collegiates, I plan to present a few cases studies on this blog. These case studies are by no means authoritative, broadly representative, or scientifically selected. They are drawn from my contacts list and presented for illustrative (aka qualitative) purposes.

This week I’ll share a Facebook-mail exchange I had with Michael Giarlo, a former colleague at the Rutgers University Libraries who is now a software developer and librarian at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.



HG: Have you used Facebook for work - either job related tasks or networking/job-seeking? If so, how?

MG: The majority of my "friends" on Facebook are work-related folks, so in some sense I have used Facebook for work. Since sites such as Facebook or Twitter -- where short, quasi-public messages may be jotted off at any time -- have become available and widely used, other media start to seem more formal, somehow. And so rather than sending out the periodical "hey, how ya doing?" e-mail to dozens of colleagues, you can stay in touch by commenting on new photos they've posted, or status updates that catch your eye. It's a bit serendipitous.

Additionally I've been somewhat involved with some Facebook groups that have led to meeting more people than I would have had I not joined said groups. More than half of the groups I belong to are job-related, such as "Libertine Librarians," a silly group I started a year or two ago that now has almost 200 members (to the best of my memory).

Facebook has thus been a very useful tool for networking. While most of my contacts here are people I have met elsewhere, a few of them are folks I've met on Facebook via other contacts.


HG: Do you find that Facebook helps you stay close to good friends? If yes, how?

MG: To an extent, yes. The alternative to seeing a close friend's photos or status updates or saved links or blog posts pop up in my friends' feed would be, in a Facebookless world, a mass e-mail. For some strange reason, mass e-mail seems impersonal where Facebook updates do not. I suppose because one does not see the zillion other people who've been included in the e-mail? It seems less intrusive and more personal to get updates via Facebook feeds.


HG: What other functions of Facebook do you use (games, groups, events, etc.)? Have any of these been particularly helpful, useful, or pleasant/fun? If yes, please explain.

MG: I have installed a very small number of applications because I do find that they're rather "cluttersome." But I have found groups and events somewhat useful. I've used events -- public, private, and group-based -- to plan real-world events, and I found that it worked quite well.