Early users of Facebook.com are responding with mixed reactions to the social network website’s attempts to mass market itself. As Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, a commentary on the collapse and revival of the American community, once lamented: “Do I want to be friends with my uncle?”
The garlic and crucifix initially keeping the commercial monsters at bay was the “.edu” domain, which allowed only students and faculty members on the network. But now that restriction is gone and the commercial forces have been let loose. The undead are moving and the scramble to capitalise on Facebook’s popularity is intense.
Facebook’s remorseless growth from a small start-up venture to a multibillion-dollar company has been brutally quick. In three years Facebook has grown to the point where it is now a significant threat to MySpace.com, the other social networking giant. Comparisons are made often but, although they seemingly do the same thing, there are some crucial differences.
MySpace is considered yesterday’s news. People are fickle, especially when it comes to fads and trends. Having a MySpace account is tantamount to wearing last year’s shoes.
The whole world loves the underdog; in the one corner you have college dropout Mark Zuckerberg — a twentysomething who still goes to work in his jeans. In the other is the might of Newscorp, personified by Rupert Murdoch, specialising in making offers that cannot be refused.
Cosmetically, there are differences too. Facebook looks better and appearances make a difference. Geeks might be geeks, but they like things to look good as much as anyone else. Zuckerberg said: “One thing that we’ve spent a lot of time on is keeping the site clean — it’s famous, after all, for its simple blue-and-white interface.”
And, joy of joys, a Facebook page loads quickly and efficiently, whereas a visit to a MySpace page can be a trip into HTML hell. MySpace has permitted a certain amount of customisation that, in the hands of inexperienced users, often leads to loading problems and page freezes. MySpace looks tawdry whereas Facebook looks fresh and inviting. It is Uma Thurman flashing her smile versus Paris Hilton flashing her chihuahua.
To get to the enviable position it is in now, Facebook has taken some risks and gambled with the goodwill of its users. So far the gambles have paid off.
If the first controversial thing was to allow off-campus users, the second was to introduce the news feed feature. A howl of outrage greeted the announcement and Zuckerberg was forced to say publicly: “Calm down. Breathe. We hear you.” Facebook rode out the storm and the news feed — with one sponsored message a day — became an established feature.
The most recent major change happened when Facebook opened its development portal, which, with the news feed, creates commercially fertile ground.
The instant the development platform went live, the news feed gamble made sense. Facebook went from being an addictive way to chat to friends to a useful business tool. How useful depends on whether you regard yourself as predator or prey.
There are now hundreds of thousands of developers writing Facebook applications. These developers range from schoolboys hacking away on their parents PCs to entire companies using their IT resources. To try to gain leverage from Facebook there is a land rush of developers attempting to occupy the same virtual real estate. “Must be able to write Facebook apps” appears on job descriptions and the ability to do so is a prized commodity.
Facebook’s unprecedented ability for free and viral advertising is fuelling the drive for useful apps. Pimp My App is the name of the game. It is possible for an app to have tens of thousands of users in a matter of hours. You just cannot get that type of exposure by conventional means.
iLike — a music sharing app — reached 20Â 000 users in 13 hours. The content of the news feed is the holy grail of Facebook advertising and the heartbeat of its commercial success.
As a user logs on to Facebook, a complex algorithm creates the feed and displays it on the user’s wall. In the news feed is information about any new apps installed by a user’s friends and which that friend might recommend.
Everybody hates spam, but by using the combination of the feed and the recommendations of friends –trusted sources — the successful app writers get their product across on a massive scale. In effect your friends become the spammers and you tolerate it. Very clever, very effective.
While the developer platform is creating a niche for new Facebook applications, it is changing the nature of Facebook itself. No longer is it merely a social networking site, it is also taking on the look of an operating system.
The creation of new applications means users can spend more time on the Facebook site as they need less third-party applications and websites to perform other tasks.
In that respect Facebook is becoming The Complete User Experience. Other companies, such as e-commerce giant eBay, are being forced to respond. But rather than trying to build a better mousetrap by copying Facebook, they are reverse engineering their websites and building social networking components on top of what they have already, using their existing user base.
Of course, none of this might be of any use to you. You might have no interest in writing the killer app or creating the indispensable widget. You merely want to use it to interact. You might want to form a communication group with people with common interests, improve client relations, promote your cause, give your small business an edge, share your faith or simply stay in touch with friends and family.
You’re in the right place. Facebook allows social networking that is almost voyeuristic. It gives you the ability to experience parallel lives with your friends; through the status feature you can update your movements and thoughts. As the site is accessible from a cellphone and a web browser, you can experience your friends’ lives “live”, as they can yours.
“Tamlyn is feeling happy”, “Jeffrey is going to movies”, “George is bombing Afghanistan”, “George is bombing Iraq”, “George is bombing Iran”. If this type of social intimacy makes you feel a little uneasy, it does have practical benefits. Immediately after the Virginia Tech massacre, a student updated her page with “I’m safe”.
If there is one thing that Facebook makes apparent immediately, in an uneasy kind of way, it is this: you are not unique. No matter what your thoughts are, your beliefs, your religion, your causes, your likes, dislikes, quirks, fetishes and any other conceivable personality traits, there is a kindred spirit out there. In fact there are so many they have formed a group and are busy nattering away among themselves: from The Flat Earth Society to Existential Dwarf Tossers to Virgins Against Vivisection.
At some point, though, you are going to want to leave Facebook and then you sit with a dilemma. If you leave, you lose all your friends. You’re locked in.
How do you de-couple yourself from all those friends, all those apps? What to do? Do you, as one person said, “really want to be friends with everyone you’ve ever met?” Do you risk Facebook separation anxiety, Facebook angst, Facebook divorce? Or do you just stay and join Old People with Cats?