Facebook – All about

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It’s estimated that more than one-third (35 percent) of U.S. adults have a profile on a social networking site, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project’s daily tracking survey of 2,251 adults. A more practical survey can be done just by thinking of the number of people you know who use these sites – starting with yourself.

While many will legitimately use social networking sites for broadcasting, distribution, and communication purposes, more people are attempting to instigate and manage friendships online.

Therein lies the problem. I contend that if social networking sites contribute to the decline or decay of social skills, they inadvertently create an antisocial mindset for people as they navigate in the real world because they become more adept and comfortable at socializing in an online world.

If you were walking down the street, or sitting on a bus and someone tapped you on the shoulder and said, “I’d like to add you as a friend,” you would look at them as though they were insane, or at the very least, with skepticism. Online, most people are not nearly as discriminate about their friend selections as they are in real life, but they should be.

Friends are afforded special privileges both online and offline. Offline you have to earn them. Online they are instantly granted. One such privilege is knowing who your other friends are and what you are up to. This comes in the form of “updates” which a surprising number of people use to post personal information and comments.

The shouting nature of MySpace (which is saturated with people who are eager to draw attention to themselves or their songs) makes it a favorite among a younger demographic of social network users.

Dr. Himanshu Tyagi, a psychiatrist at West London Mental Health Trust, stated in a recent report that people born after 1990, who were just five-years-old or younger when the use of Internet became mainstream in 1995, have grown up in a world dominated by online social networks such as MySpace and Facebook. He states:

“This is the age group involved with the Bridgend suicides and what many of these young people had in common was their use of Internet to communicate. It’s a world where everything moves fast and changes all the time, where relationships are quickly disposed at the click of a mouse, where you can delete your profile if you don’t like it and swap an unacceptable identity in the blink of an eye for one that is more acceptable,” said Dr. Tyagi. “People used to the quick pace of online social networking may soon find the real world boring and unstimulating, potentially leading to more extreme behavior to get that sense.”

It’s been my observation that most people don’t know who they have among their “friends” on MySpace. More commonly, people amass hoards of friends strictly for the sake of appearance – the appearance of being popular. So friends can get used both offline and online in that regard.

The 80/20 rule teaches us a lot about friends and time invested in friendships (which is what really defines them). 80% of correspondence that you send to anyone on any given social networking site will be sent to only 20% of the people you have in your “friends list.” Just as 80% of your time spent nurturing friendships will be with 20% of your friends. You are most likely to communicate with that 20% without the aid of a social network.

Facebook, for lack of a better if not more accurate description, has become the adult version of MySpace. As the real estate mantra goes: build it and they will come. But social networks have a saying all their own: build it and they will use it for illegitimate purposes.

B.J. Fogg, director of the Persuasive Tech Lab at Stanford University and editor of a book called The Psychology of Facebook has been studying the social networking phenomenon for years. He argues that what we are doing on Facebook and other social networking sites is a lot like “primate” grooming. We are building “social solidarity” by publicly flirting and socializing online.

Yes, your suspicions are correct: the most illegitimate use of social networks takes place among people who are married or in committed relationships who use them to locate old flames. Actually, that’s not the illegitimate part. The illegitimacy stems from the resulting clandestine relationships that occur. There’s a lot of rekindling taking place on social networks…probably right now as you read this article.

According to Nancy Kalish, a professor of psychology at Cal State Sacramento and author of the book Lost & Found Lovers: Facts and Fantasies of Rekindled Romance, many people try to reunite online because it’s so easy,” Kalish says. “Most people go looking for lost loves, initially, out of curiosity. First loves in particular are most often sought out online, she says, and they pose the most danger to real-world relationships for two reasons: biological and emotional.

First, she says, when two people meet in the adolescent years (between 16 and 22), they start to form their identity together and break away from family. In those formative years, “you define what love is and what you want from a partner, and when you lose that, you lose that piece of yourself.” This combines with the hormones that are encoding in your brain at that age as “emotive memory” and creates a biological imprint of that person.

On top of all this chemistry, the adolescent years are typically the years when humans start to reach their reproductive maturity and look for biologically compatible mates. Kalish argues that this in turn causes problems because people are delaying marriage. She says, “we are so far away from marrying our first love because people are waiting until later in life to settle down. When they do settle down, oftentimes, the chemistry just isn’t the same.”

Perhaps this is the reason why in the Pew survey, of the adults who had removed their profile from a social networking site, 3 percent said they did it because their spouse or partner wanted it removed.

My favorite social networking site is LinkedIn. It’s essentially an online portal for resumes. Like the others, it operates on a membership/sign-up basis, but is geared toward professionals and building professional networks. Unlike MySpace and Facebook, people lead with their credentials on LinkedIn and the site regulates, discourages, and prevents abuse of the system by blocking those who get repeated rejections for linking requests.

It’s most distinctive feature are the recommendations that others make on your behalf to help you complete and promote your profile. The LinkedIn business premise is simple: you should know at least 5 people with whom you have real relationships who can endorse you to make you a more valuable connection to others.

LinkedIn is not a cozy, give-a-shot-out, tell you about my weekend, post a stupid comment about what I just saw on TV social network. It is for serious professionals who want to network with credentialed people without the levity and frivolity that is so commonplace on social networks. It’s not designed for conviviality and making friends.

Another social network that’s growing in popularity is Twitter. Twitter allows users to “follow” each other (i.e. keep up with each other’s activities) and is predicated on the exchange of short updates that can be seen online via their website or sent to you via your cell phone. I suspect that many music artists and professionals who regularly calendar events that the public, their fans, or constituents need to be made aware of will utilize it more in the future.

Personally, I have yet to make a friend through any social networking site. Nor do I know of anyone who has. I’m sure it happens. I’ve even been contacted by “friends” from my past. I’m hesitant to call them “friends” because I believe it’s extremely rare when you lose contact with a real friend.

Most of the time when we lose contact with each other it’s because we lacked the motivation or commitment to maintain the friendship in the first place; therefore, I tend to keep past “friends” in my past because that’s usually where they belong. Those who don’t subscribe to this philosophy usually end up briefly re-uniting with their past friends and drifting apart once more.

For me, the social networks offer their greatest value from a professional capacity. They serve as a divide between my associates and my friends, while allowing me to communicate with both simultaneously. But in the end, they offer us a reminder of just how valuable real friends and friendships are, if we can take our faces away from the computers screens long enough to realize it.

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Every small business owner knows only too well that a well planned marketing strategy will keep them in profit regardless of the ups and downs of the economy. Some business owners tend to plough much of their marketing budget into offline advertising, like press ads, magazine ads, radio and television commercials.

Whilst others prefer to invest their money in online advertising like pay-per-click and flashy banner ads.

With the trend increasingly in favour of online advertising, simply due to the huge volume of online shoppers, many business owners who are trying to promote their products and services online are obviously facing a few problems.

Not least is the problem of e-confusion.

This embarrassing and uncomfortable condition is brought about due the numerous streams of marketing options now available to all internet based businesses. Anyone who has been soundly educated in the bricks and mortar type world of business and marketing is now finding it increasing difficult to know which way to turn.

Should they focus all their efforts and resources on pay-per-click or have a few banner ads circulating cyberspace too? Well, it would appear that the outcome of this little decision is the very least of their problems. The real dilemma, which is striking fear into all but the very savvy of Internet marketers is, where does social network marketing fit into their strategy?

It can’t be ignored. There are millions of potential customers frequenting the social sites like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, not to mention LinkedIn, Bebo, Hi5 and Friendster. And every dedicated businessman and woman worth their weight in salt knows that you have to ply your trade where people gather.

It’s what’s called a market!

As offline advertising becomes more and more expensive and much less effective, many small business owners know they must get a foot firmly on the threshold of as many streams of new media marketing as possible. And herein lies the problem for many, because they simply don’t know how to.

New media marketing is not even remotely like marketing in the real world and it goes against everything business owners have come to know and trust. So here lies a big opportunity. Master the many facets of internet marketing and you master the web.

Sounds simple but in practice it’s going to take work, effort, training, learning and trial and error. So why is internet marketing so complex?

It’s because there are so many options, and a business that wants to survive, grow and prosper needs to explore most of them before deciding on which marketing option is right for them.

The social networks have already been mentioned and come high in the list of avenues waiting to be explored. A search on Google for “social network websites” returns a page count of more than 295 million, which at least suggests its importance. That’s certainly a lot of web pages devoted to the subject. But social network marketing is only part of the equation.

Today, the modern savvy internet marketer, AKA online business owner, needs to be conversant with or at least familiar with article marketing, affiliate marketing, referral marketing, viral marketing, video marketing and forum marketing.

Then there are blogs and RSS feeds, search engine optimisation, keyword optimisation plus joint ventures and online press releases to consider.

All these avenues are merely options, in which a business needs to apply its marketing formulas. It’s a bit like a fishing expedition. You have to find out which one is going to be the most productive.

So is it any wonder why so many small business owners are e-confused?

The answer to this problem is that small business owners need to educate and familiarize themselves with all the aspects of the many Internet marketing methods, strategies and techniques. It may seem like a daunting task, but how else will the online entrepreneur know what will work for them?

Successful Internet marketing is all about finding a method that works then test, tweak and fine-tune it to perfection. It may take a little work, time and effort but it’s been proven to be one of the most desirable routes to becoming seriously rich in a relatively short period of time.

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The World of Facebook…

……..and other social not-working sites leave many of us more socially retarded than we were in high school…

Returning to Canada and running into “Facebook friends” of mine has really puzzled, humored–and in some cases annoyed me–enough that I think writing this article is worth my time.

Does anyone else have the following contacts on Facebook?

The brother or sister who is apparently too afraid to talk to you in person, but is chatty on your wall and private messages as if you’ve been through hell and high water together? Or what about Joe “I went to high school/elementary school with you, but don’t answer anything you write me-even though I’m the one who sent you the friend request in the first place?” Or the friend you know “from somewhere”, and have not been in touch with for years and years, and you have an initial “entry level communication” with? What I mean by that is, say that you found this person, and added them, and once they accepted your invite, you wrote on their wall or sent them a private message that showed up in their inbox, they responded, and had a follow up question of their own about your life and what is new with them. You respond to this and ask them one or two more details about their life, and the communication ends there with a total of three interactions–entry-level communication, but you remain “Facebook friends”, and no doubt keep spying on each other’s sites to know the latest news and developments, but otherwise have no real communication whatsoever.

Now, I’m not popular, and never have been–don’t get me wrong. I have never been known to have lots of friends in social settings, but this Facebook thing, well everybody seems to be on it! I have almost 700 contacts on it, and yes, I am at the very minimum at least acquainted with all of them–but still accept ones I don’t recognize hoping THEY will indicate how we know each other. And I have a handful of fictional characters from TV shows like The Simpsons. I accept any and every invitation I get, even if I don’t recognize the person sending me the invite. Unless of course you’re some hoochie mama and in your picture you’re wearing almost clothes or I recognize your name from my seedy past of internet porn addiction, or I otherwise just simply know your name and pic is bad news and no real fruitful communication will come of it.

I’ve been on this thing for almost two years now, and I’ve noticed some peculiar things about human and social interaction from this website, that I realized telling my computer illiterate grandmother about it has helped me see just how ridiculously stupid the world of Facebook is (and of course, MySpace) if you really think about it and try describing to someone on the outside or who didn’t grow up with the Internet.

One of those ridiculous observations is in fact the very reason I joined it-how easy it is to stay moderately informed about the latest goings-on in the lives of people in my social network with very little effort involved on my part-or theirs. When I first joined Facebook, the privacy settings were such that everything people did on their page showed up in my mini-feed. This is the part of your page, where once you sign in, there’s a list of the latest activity that has taken place on your friends’ pages. I LOVED this feature, and have taken full use of it by constantly putting pictures and newsletters, and now audio mp3s of our podcast, onto this social network, to constantly make people reminded of me. That’s simply it. I still don’t know the balance of how often is too often and becomes annoying, but this website is one of the most brilliant things people have invented for the internet and gotten me “in touch” with way more individuals than I could have on my own effort.

However, many people who joined the site were up in arms that they had so “little privacy” by having all the latest developments show up in their friends’ mini-feeds (basically the home page after signing into the site). This is the part that has puzzled me completely: why did people join such a site if they felt that what happens on it is an invasion of privacy? And if they don’t want certain people to know their latest updates, then why did they add them as friends on their network? If you don’t want someone to see your page, there’s boxes you check in your account information.

Myself, I have almost everything checked, and the more people on my account the merrier. I have forged for myself a career path that is public, and my life–generally speaking–is an open book, so the more I can put myself on peoples’ minds for prayer and knowledge of my missionary life, the better it is for my interests of keeping people informed–especially those who WANT to be. Most or at least many churches in North America give little time and interest to the Great Commission as it is (other than outreach to the local community-which many churches excel at, in my opinion–but the sending out of missionaries…..?), so missionaries like myself have to keep making sure they come to your attention as much as the local “change the color of the sanctuary carpet” fund. Pictures can say a thousand words, so I put almost all of them on Facebook and you can SEE what I’m doing.

Needless to say, I love Facebook! But probably for different reasons than most who use it.

But allow me to put my emphasis on the word touch in the “keeping in touch” that Facebook allows. You barely have any real interaction with each other on this site. I’ve known about peoples’ marriage and dating developments from their “relationship status” changing and showing up in my mini feed. I’ve known other people who’ve found out their girlfriends were dumping them by changing their relationship status on Facebook!

Probably none of you reading this will go out of the way to leave a comment about what you agree or disagree with, since on Facebook most people just lurk and ‘face stalk’, but you will have read this anyway. This is typical of the online community our generation is becoming–don’t you think?

{authorbox}

The World of Facebook…

……..and other social not-working sites leave many of us more socially retarded than we were in high school…

Returning to Canada and running into “Facebook friends” of mine has really puzzled, humored–and in some cases annoyed me–enough that I think writing this article is worth my time.

Does anyone else have the following contacts on Facebook?

The brother or sister who is apparently too afraid to talk to you in person, but is chatty on your wall and private messages as if you’ve been through hell and high water together? Or what about Joe “I went to high school/elementary school with you, but don’t answer anything you write me-even though I’m the one who sent you the friend request in the first place?” Or the friend you know “from somewhere”, and have not been in touch with for years and years, and you have an initial “entry level communication” with? What I mean by that is, say that you found this person, and added them, and once they accepted your invite, you wrote on their wall or sent them a private message that showed up in their inbox, they responded, and had a follow up question of their own about your life and what is new with them. You respond to this and ask them one or two more details about their life, and the communication ends there with a total of three interactions–entry-level communication, but you remain “Facebook friends”, and no doubt keep spying on each other’s sites to know the latest news and developments, but otherwise have no real communication whatsoever.

Now, I’m not popular, and never have been–don’t get me wrong. I have never been known to have lots of friends in social settings, but this Facebook thing, well everybody seems to be on it! I have almost 700 contacts on it, and yes, I am at the very minimum at least acquainted with all of them–but still accept ones I don’t recognize hoping THEY will indicate how we know each other. And I have a handful of fictional characters from TV shows like The Simpsons. I accept any and every invitation I get, even if I don’t recognize the person sending me the invite. Unless of course you’re some hoochie mama and in your picture you’re wearing almost clothes or I recognize your name from my seedy past of internet porn addiction, or I otherwise just simply know your name and pic is bad news and no real fruitful communication will come of it.

I’ve been on this thing for almost two years now, and I’ve noticed some peculiar things about human and social interaction from this website, that I realized telling my computer illiterate grandmother about it has helped me see just how ridiculously stupid the world of Facebook is (and of course, MySpace) if you really think about it and try describing to someone on the outside or who didn’t grow up with the Internet.

One of those ridiculous observations is in fact the very reason I joined it-how easy it is to stay moderately informed about the latest goings-on in the lives of people in my social network with very little effort involved on my part-or theirs. When I first joined Facebook, the privacy settings were such that everything people did on their page showed up in my mini-feed. This is the part of your page, where once you sign in, there’s a list of the latest activity that has taken place on your friends’ pages. I LOVED this feature, and have taken full use of it by constantly putting pictures and newsletters, and now audio mp3s of our podcast, onto this social network, to constantly make people reminded of me. That’s simply it. I still don’t know the balance of how often is too often and becomes annoying, but this website is one of the most brilliant things people have invented for the internet and gotten me “in touch” with way more individuals than I could have on my own effort.

However, many people who joined the site were up in arms that they had so “little privacy” by having all the latest developments show up in their friends’ mini-feeds (basically the home page after signing into the site). This is the part that has puzzled me completely: why did people join such a site if they felt that what happens on it is an invasion of privacy? And if they don’t want certain people to know their latest updates, then why did they add them as friends on their network? If you don’t want someone to see your page, there’s boxes you check in your account information.

Myself, I have almost everything checked, and the more people on my account the merrier. I have forged for myself a career path that is public, and my life–generally speaking–is an open book, so the more I can put myself on peoples’ minds for prayer and knowledge of my missionary life, the better it is for my interests of keeping people informed–especially those who WANT to be. Most or at least many churches in North America give little time and interest to the Great Commission as it is (other than outreach to the local community-which many churches excel at, in my opinion–but the sending out of missionaries…..?), so missionaries like myself have to keep making sure they come to your attention as much as the local “change the color of the sanctuary carpet” fund. Pictures can say a thousand words, so I put almost all of them on Facebook and you can SEE what I’m doing.

Needless to say, I love Facebook! But probably for different reasons than most who use it.

But allow me to put my emphasis on the word touch in the “keeping in touch” that Facebook allows. You barely have any real interaction with each other on this site. I’ve known about peoples’ marriage and dating developments from their “relationship status” changing and showing up in my mini feed. I’ve known other people who’ve found out their girlfriends were dumping them by changing their relationship status on Facebook!

Probably none of you reading this will go out of the way to leave a comment about what you agree or disagree with, since on Facebook most people just lurk and ‘face stalk’, but you will have read this anyway. This is typical of the online community our generation is becoming–don’t you think?

{authorbox}

The World of Facebook…

……..and other social not-working sites leave many of us more socially retarded than we were in high school…

Returning to Canada and running into “Facebook friends” of mine has really puzzled, humored–and in some cases annoyed me–enough that I think writing this article is worth my time.

Does anyone else have the following contacts on Facebook?

The brother or sister who is apparently too afraid to talk to you in person, but is chatty on your wall and private messages as if you’ve been through hell and high water together? Or what about Joe “I went to high school/elementary school with you, but don’t answer anything you write me-even though I’m the one who sent you the friend request in the first place?” Or the friend you know “from somewhere”, and have not been in touch with for years and years, and you have an initial “entry level communication” with? What I mean by that is, say that you found this person, and added them, and once they accepted your invite, you wrote on their wall or sent them a private message that showed up in their inbox, they responded, and had a follow up question of their own about your life and what is new with them. You respond to this and ask them one or two more details about their life, and the communication ends there with a total of three interactions–entry-level communication, but you remain “Facebook friends”, and no doubt keep spying on each other’s sites to know the latest news and developments, but otherwise have no real communication whatsoever.

Now, I’m not popular, and never have been–don’t get me wrong. I have never been known to have lots of friends in social settings, but this Facebook thing, well everybody seems to be on it! I have almost 700 contacts on it, and yes, I am at the very minimum at least acquainted with all of them–but still accept ones I don’t recognize hoping THEY will indicate how we know each other. And I have a handful of fictional characters from TV shows like The Simpsons. I accept any and every invitation I get, even if I don’t recognize the person sending me the invite. Unless of course you’re some hoochie mama and in your picture you’re wearing almost clothes or I recognize your name from my seedy past of internet porn addiction, or I otherwise just simply know your name and pic is bad news and no real fruitful communication will come of it.

I’ve been on this thing for almost two years now, and I’ve noticed some peculiar things about human and social interaction from this website, that I realized telling my computer illiterate grandmother about it has helped me see just how ridiculously stupid the world of Facebook is (and of course, MySpace) if you really think about it and try describing to someone on the outside or who didn’t grow up with the Internet.

One of those ridiculous observations is in fact the very reason I joined it-how easy it is to stay moderately informed about the latest goings-on in the lives of people in my social network with very little effort involved on my part-or theirs. When I first joined Facebook, the privacy settings were such that everything people did on their page showed up in my mini-feed. This is the part of your page, where once you sign in, there’s a list of the latest activity that has taken place on your friends’ pages. I LOVED this feature, and have taken full use of it by constantly putting pictures and newsletters, and now audio mp3s of our podcast, onto this social network, to constantly make people reminded of me. That’s simply it. I still don’t know the balance of how often is too often and becomes annoying, but this website is one of the most brilliant things people have invented for the internet and gotten me “in touch” with way more individuals than I could have on my own effort.

However, many people who joined the site were up in arms that they had so “little privacy” by having all the latest developments show up in their friends’ mini-feeds (basically the home page after signing into the site). This is the part that has puzzled me completely: why did people join such a site if they felt that what happens on it is an invasion of privacy? And if they don’t want certain people to know their latest updates, then why did they add them as friends on their network? If you don’t want someone to see your page, there’s boxes you check in your account information.

Myself, I have almost everything checked, and the more people on my account the merrier. I have forged for myself a career path that is public, and my life–generally speaking–is an open book, so the more I can put myself on peoples’ minds for prayer and knowledge of my missionary life, the better it is for my interests of keeping people informed–especially those who WANT to be. Most or at least many churches in North America give little time and interest to the Great Commission as it is (other than outreach to the local community-which many churches excel at, in my opinion–but the sending out of missionaries…..?), so missionaries like myself have to keep making sure they come to your attention as much as the local “change the color of the sanctuary carpet” fund. Pictures can say a thousand words, so I put almost all of them on Facebook and you can SEE what I’m doing.

Needless to say, I love Facebook! But probably for different reasons than most who use it.

But allow me to put my emphasis on the word touch in the “keeping in touch” that Facebook allows. You barely have any real interaction with each other on this site. I’ve known about peoples’ marriage and dating developments from their “relationship status” changing and showing up in my mini feed. I’ve known other people who’ve found out their girlfriends were dumping them by changing their relationship status on Facebook!

Probably none of you reading this will go out of the way to leave a comment about what you agree or disagree with, since on Facebook most people just lurk and ‘face stalk’, but you will have read this anyway. This is typical of the online community our generation is becoming–don’t you think?

{authorbox}