My Week in Facebook

I've always been a bit out of touch with the pop culture. The bands
I listen to are Scottish, I've never seen Friends, I learned who
Oprah was when I was fifteen, and as of this writing I still haven't
figured out who Grey is and why there's a TV show about his anatomy.
Oh well. I suppose that provides me with a unique point of view for
an analysis of Facebook. I first logged onto the Facebook website
(www.facebook.com) at age 19 as a freshman in college. My friends had
been telling me that I should get one for a long time. Frankly, I
didn't see the point. For one thing, I had a .Mac website that was so
much more interesting, and besides, I'd heard a lot of the horror
stories concerning sites like My-Space and Xanga. Nevertheless, my
friends insisted that this was safer. They also told me that my
current website is hard to find which is true. Finally, I decided to
get an account and use it in order to promote my other website. That
way, after finding me on Facebook my friends could follow a link to
the more personal site. Thus I entered into the world of Facebook and
was surprised by many of the features. I was intrigued by the many
functions and capabilities that I decided to evaluate websites like
Facebook and MySpace and analyze what it is that they do.

In case you're not familiar with Facebook, I will provide a brief
summary. I confess that I must marvel at the designer's creativity.
Each individual has an account to which they assign a profile photo
of themselves. The privacy level of this site is much higher than,
say My-Space for instance where anyone can browse your page. Here,
only people to whom you specifically grant permission can view your
profile. After they are granted permission, they are listed among
your "Friends". You can upload photo albums for free and "tag" people
who are in the photos. They are then notified the next time they log
in to their profile which allows for a great network of sharing
photos. Facebook also has a great set up for scheduling events. One
day, I decided to host a small movie night, so I set up the event on
Facebook with provided info. I then quickly selected names of people
who were invited, and then posted the event. My friends were then
notified and could quickly R.S.V.P. over the web. Sure, it wasn't a
nice personal invitation, but this kind of event didn't call for one,
and Facebook sufficed nicely. Part of your profile page is called the
"wall" where people can post comments to each other. There's a
section for personal information which includes favorite movies,
music, religious and political views, as well your school. There is
also room for info on a person's dating status where people advertise
whether they are "Single, In a Relationship, Engaged, Married," etc.
and whether they are looking for "Friendship", "A Relationship",
"Dating", "Random Play", or "Whatever I can get". You can join a
network which allows for you to see who else is in it, and you can
search the entire database for someone by name.

After poking around for a few minutes, a thought occurred to me. I
had a bunch of friends that I had met at summer camp years ago whom I
had since fallen out of touch with, so I searched Facebook for their
names. Nine out of ten of them were on Facebook. Since then, one
friend of mine and I have gotten back in touch. My friend lives in
Austin, and I haven't spoken to him since July of 2005. Unless I call
him up on the telephone, our communication is going to be somewhat
superficial and disconnected, but that's a lot better than nothing.
In fact, Facebook allows me to keep in touch with folks much easier
than I would otherwise. If I want to check and see how "Dave" is
doing, then all I have to do is visit his profile on Facebook; from
there I can see what school he's been going to, what his current
interests are, and what kind of things he's been doing. It also
provides a nice interface from which to email him if I so choose.
"Well," I thought, "that's one great thing about Facebook. I can
easily maintain relationships… Or can I?" True, this was helpful in
contacting Dave, but I wasn't going to be seeing him anytime soon,
and this is the closest contact I can have without calling him by
phone. What about my other buddies who have Facebook? Is this really
helpful in keeping in touch with people who I see daily or even weekly?

Some of my friends have told me they are "addicted" to Facebook and
spend a lot of time on it. While it at first sounds ludicrous, I
found that it is easy to get sucked into it. There's an urge to log
in to check to see if there are any recent posts on your wall or if
anyone has posted new pictures of you. All of this info was stunning
to me, and I began to put some thought into it after the initial
shock wore off. I began to ask myself if this method of communicating
is really helpful to people or whether communicating over Facebook,
Xanga, and MySpace might not be the best use of these resources.

It is important to remember that the internet is a tool. Like
television, iPods, computers, and all of our other little gizmos
today, the internet and websites like Facebook, MySpace, and Xanga
are tools for us to use or misuse. Often times, a piece of software
is not used in the way it was designed, or perhaps people discover
that it could be better used to fulfill another need. An example I am
looking at here is the usage of wall posts. People write to each
other very frequently. After looking at the walls of some of my
friends, I see posts ranging from random banter, silly remarks, and
flirting to scheduling events, serious comments, and casual
conversation. A lot of people try to build and maintain friendships
through postings on these blogs, but due to the framework of the
internet, people are forced into a skin deep level of communication
that is not helpful or beneficial.

While the internet was used for communication, the framework was not
designed to be a setting for relationships to grow, bloom, and fall
apart. I am not addressing the issue of internet dating. I am
speaking of something that is far more common: friendship. The web
was not made for this kind of communication. What it is made for is
the relaying of technical information in an impersonal setting. If
you're trouble shooting your computer, you can log onto a tech
support website and give the problem in a technical way, and get a
technical answer. The other posts on there are made by real people,
but they are anonymous, and the setting is impersonal which is fine.
When you're flash card won't mount, you don't want someone venting
about his or her love life nor do you want to say how your day has
gone. You're interested in the technical side of the issue which is
fine. Even if you're using the website to send photos, home videos,
and the like, it is no different than sending it by snail mail. The
interface is impersonal an technical and does its job. The problems
enter when this interface begins to be used to convey personal
information. No matter how much personal information you post about
yourself, you still have a degree of anonymity. Even if the
information your portraying is accurate, it is still not you because
a person is not made up of their birthday, workplace and school.
Let's say someone who knows me in real life posts a comment on my
profile. Here, I am still not completely accountable. I don't have to
respond, or if I do, I can say whatever I want without being
concerned about their immediate reaction like I would in a real
conversation.

Some may argue that conversing over the internet is no different
from people writing to each other over a series of letters like in
the old days. Maybe I would agree if not for the fact that the
comments that are usually made on Facebook are not personal letters.
The people are not spending several minutes on each post like they
might with a letter. The level of communication is impersonal
regardless of the funny profile picture or the cool list of hobbies.
People are talking in a room where they wear frozen masks (often not
of themselves), they have a list of personal info that they carry
with them, and they all sound alike. Thus, even when people do
attempt meaningful conversation through Facebook, it is only skin
deep. The messages may say "I love you", and "You're the best friend
ever", but it's not the same as real human to human contact. However,
because people at least attempt to convey deep messages, people
receive the illusion that they are having a real conversation and are
building a relationship. As a result, they don't feel the need to
discuss the topics that they've just "Facebooked" to each other in
person. Why bother? Why be redundant? Unfortunately for some people,
they might feel that they have been nurturing their friendship when
in reality all they have done is exchange little notes to each other
that do not carry the inflection of voice, the platform of body
language, or even the uniqueness of a pen stroke.

The issue of "Friends" was another aspect of Facebook that caught my
attention. As I said before, a person cannot view your profile unless
they are approved by you. Most of the time, this is done by making
them a "Friend". While this sounds rather harmless, what I have a
problem with is the number of friends. I would look at the profiles
of my real friends and would see that that some had over 500 friends.
Soon enough I started getting requests from people to be their
friend. Most of these were people who really were close friends, and
of course I obliged. More recently, however, I got invites from
people who were simply acquaintances. One person who requested a
friendship was someone who I had to think of for a while before I
remembered who this person was. This prompted me to send out an email
to a bunch of my friends and ask them about it. I asked how many
"Friends" they had on Facebook and then how many of them were real
friends as opposed to being simply acquaintances. One good friend
told me that she has almost 500 friends on Facebook, but has actually
spent time with around 150 of them. The rest, according to her, might
receive a casual "Hi" and engage in a casual conversation, but were
people it would be funny to call them actual friends. Another friend
of mine said that only half of her Face-friends are people with whom
she would spend time outside of school. Maybe I wouldn't see this as
a big deal if there was a feature on Facebook that made people simply
acquaintances or even "contacts" which is what my address book does.
It unnerves me that people log onto face a computer screen that tells
them they have hundreds of friends with whom only a few are people
they can actually depend on, trust, and confide in.

In considering everything I've learned about Facebook, the question
of what to do with it begs an answer. Like the internet, email, and
instant messaging, profile web pages like Facebook have their own
useful purpose and uses. Unfortunately, they don't work so well on
issues like relaying personal messages, nor do they convey the
feeling that a lot of thought and care went into the writing (i.e.
typing) that a letter or even a card give. And as for building
relationships, even though something like the phone doesn't provide
the openness and accountability of face to face contact, it is often
practical and can still be personal in a pinch. Short messages in
Lucida Grande font posted on a person's web page, however, really
doesn't cut it. Messages like "hey! yia was a blast! wish you coulda
been there....but i had fun last night! :p " don't build the
relationship, and yet it's still contact however shallow.

So what are Facebook, MySpace, and Xanga? They are very clever tools
to keep in touch with people and let them know what's going on. This
can be used effectively such as posting a bunch of photos on the web
of you and your friends and letting them easily take a look or it can
be used to let a bunch of people know very quickly that you are
having a get together at your place and provide them a nifty little
setting to quickly drop you a "Yes, I'll be there", "No", or a
"Maybe". However, this is not at all efficient for building or even
maintaining a relationship. Daniel and I are not closer now that
we're "Friends" on Facebook, though we can let each other know what's
going on in life. I cannot even imagine trying to make a friend
through this medium. While sending ones and zeroes across the web in
the form of pics and neat articles works pretty well here, it's when
you get into the issue of human relationships that the recipe starts
to taste bland.

Special thanks to Margaret Yoe, Emma Markley, Emily Braden and my dad for helping me with this article.