Facebook, your Friend in the online world
People will like whatever takes care of them. Facebook takes care
of its users and its employees. If our government succeeded in
taking care of us, instead of killing our soldiers in wars of choice
and choosing hurricane response based on political
contributions59, we also will come to believe again that “I'm from
the government and I'm here to help.” Facebook helps its users
get what they want in college.
Facebook gives users what they want, which for college students
is information about their friends and school mates, for the
purpose of, well, um, sex. And fun social events, which lead to
sex. I was there once, well before facebook, and it was a great
time, but facebook has greatly streamlined the process. So
students continue to love it. Yes, I oversimplify, but Facebook’s
genius has been identifying the core needs of its users.
Social networking needs to fulfill a purpose, or people will not go
through the trouble. In college, Facebook lets you know your
peers, to a depth and breadth which was otherwise impossible.
Turns out that some high school students and college graduates
need that too, if not as passionately.
76 Inside Facebook
Copyright, Karel Baloun, 2006. All rights reserved.
59 The governing ability of our Resident is critiqued in a highly unbalanced fashion
in Crashing The Gate, which also discusses the power and future of the internet in
a political context.
As people get older, we don’t as much need to find out about the
new people around us. We have the friends we need, actually
often more friends than we have time to properly keep. We need
to know what’s up and what’s new, with the friends we have. We
need to network for business, so there’s LinkedIn. The more user
needs Facebook can fulfill, the less will competitor sites be
necessary.
Facebook also fulfills the core needs of its employees, at least its
engineers. I’ve long aimed to be a geek so I sit with the geeks.
Engineers want very much to make an impact with their work, to
see their work used. College age engineers see nothing on the
internet as impactful as the Facebook, since it has shaped their
lives since high school, and they see no reason why it shouldn’t
continue to be the place online they and their friends spend most
of their time. So Facebook lets engineers own projects, feel like
they finished them, and that the resulting impact is thanks to
them.
If a service is useful, people will be loyal to it, and give up a lot for
it, though less eagerly countable things like money. With
Facebook, users used to put up with bugs, privacy issues, and
annoying people in their networks, because it is very useful. With
Google Sync (where if my browser crashes or I move to another
computer, i still have all of my same open windows) I am willing to
tell google everything that I am looking at, or with Google
Desktop (where google keeps a copy of at least an index of all of
my personal files on some server) I am willing to show google a
Karel Baloun 77
I’ve found something to put here. Your turn.
copy of everything I have, and I expect them to keep that
information, and allow them to use it anyway they like. Sayonara
to absolutely all of my privacy, but hey, that’s okay, cuz they are
not evil, and I can’t stand it when I lose my work context to a rare
browser crash. Remember that not evil part, okay guys. Right,
guys? Hellooo. Are you still listening, or have you become huge
and dominant yet?
In what other ways will Facebook become my online Friend? Will it
somehow change the world, starting with its political election
focused groups and candidate profiles, as blogs may be changing
politics? Will an even deeper or more multifaceted purpose for
Facebook appear? Since you’ll be shaping the future through the
way you use the site, or the way you encourage and build
alternatives, what do you think?
LinkedIn is for improving business results. Simplyhired.com and
karmaone.com are for getting a job. Myspace is for everything
and nothing at the same time. Facebook is about interests, so
maybe at least it will become a vehicle for enabling progress on
those, by structuring your alignment with similar people, as
shared bookmarks like furl can do for information professionals
like researchers, librarians or authors. So many internet activities
are naturally social, some combination of vertical and general
social networks (collaborating probably, under some common
trust model) will recreate the internet as a social space.
People will like whatever takes care of them. Facebook takes care
of its users and its employees. If our government succeeded in
taking care of us, instead of killing our soldiers in wars of choice
and choosing hurricane response based on political
contributions59, we also will come to believe again that “I'm from
the government and I'm here to help.” Facebook helps its users
get what they want in college.
Facebook gives users what they want, which for college students
is information about their friends and school mates, for the
purpose of, well, um, sex. And fun social events, which lead to
sex. I was there once, well before facebook, and it was a great
time, but facebook has greatly streamlined the process. So
students continue to love it. Yes, I oversimplify, but Facebook’s
genius has been identifying the core needs of its users.
Social networking needs to fulfill a purpose, or people will not go
through the trouble. In college, Facebook lets you know your
peers, to a depth and breadth which was otherwise impossible.
Turns out that some high school students and college graduates
need that too, if not as passionately.
76 Inside Facebook
Copyright, Karel Baloun, 2006. All rights reserved.
59 The governing ability of our Resident is critiqued in a highly unbalanced fashion
in Crashing The Gate, which also discusses the power and future of the internet in
a political context.
As people get older, we don’t as much need to find out about the
new people around us. We have the friends we need, actually
often more friends than we have time to properly keep. We need
to know what’s up and what’s new, with the friends we have. We
need to network for business, so there’s LinkedIn. The more user
needs Facebook can fulfill, the less will competitor sites be
necessary.
Facebook also fulfills the core needs of its employees, at least its
engineers. I’ve long aimed to be a geek so I sit with the geeks.
Engineers want very much to make an impact with their work, to
see their work used. College age engineers see nothing on the
internet as impactful as the Facebook, since it has shaped their
lives since high school, and they see no reason why it shouldn’t
continue to be the place online they and their friends spend most
of their time. So Facebook lets engineers own projects, feel like
they finished them, and that the resulting impact is thanks to
them.
If a service is useful, people will be loyal to it, and give up a lot for
it, though less eagerly countable things like money. With
Facebook, users used to put up with bugs, privacy issues, and
annoying people in their networks, because it is very useful. With
Google Sync (where if my browser crashes or I move to another
computer, i still have all of my same open windows) I am willing to
tell google everything that I am looking at, or with Google
Desktop (where google keeps a copy of at least an index of all of
my personal files on some server) I am willing to show google a
Karel Baloun 77
I’ve found something to put here. Your turn.
copy of everything I have, and I expect them to keep that
information, and allow them to use it anyway they like. Sayonara
to absolutely all of my privacy, but hey, that’s okay, cuz they are
not evil, and I can’t stand it when I lose my work context to a rare
browser crash. Remember that not evil part, okay guys. Right,
guys? Hellooo. Are you still listening, or have you become huge
and dominant yet?
In what other ways will Facebook become my online Friend? Will it
somehow change the world, starting with its political election
focused groups and candidate profiles, as blogs may be changing
politics? Will an even deeper or more multifaceted purpose for
Facebook appear? Since you’ll be shaping the future through the
way you use the site, or the way you encourage and build
alternatives, what do you think?
LinkedIn is for improving business results. Simplyhired.com and
karmaone.com are for getting a job. Myspace is for everything
and nothing at the same time. Facebook is about interests, so
maybe at least it will become a vehicle for enabling progress on
those, by structuring your alignment with similar people, as
shared bookmarks like furl can do for information professionals
like researchers, librarians or authors. So many internet activities
are naturally social, some combination of vertical and general
social networks (collaborating probably, under some common
trust model) will recreate the internet as a social space.
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