November 30, 2007
Is Facebook doomed?
Cory Doctorow thinks so, in a piece subtly titled "How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook":
Sure, networks generally follow Metcalfe’s Law: "the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system." This law is best understood through the analogy of the fax machine: a world with one fax machine has no use for faxes, but every time you add a fax, you square the number of possible send/receive combinations (Alice can fax Bob or Carol or Don; Bob can fax Alice, Carol and Don; Carol can fax Alice, Bob and Don, etc).
But Metcalfe’s law presumes that creating more communications pathways increases the value of the system, and that’s not always true (see Brook’s Law: "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later").
Having watched the rise and fall of SixDegrees, Friendster, and the many other proto-hominids that make up the evolutionary chain leading to Facebook, MySpace, et al, I’m inclined to think that these systems are subject to a Brook’s-law parallel: "Adding more users to a social network increases the probability that it will put you in an awkward social circumstance." Perhaps we can call this "boyd’s Law" for danah boyd, the social scientist who has studied many of these networks from the inside as a keen-eyed net-anthropologist and who has described the many ways in which social software does violence to sociability in a series of sharp papers.
Cory has many more complaints - and a separate one about privacy here.
Meanwhile Seamus McCauley thinks Facebook advertising is dead on arrival because people will get plug-ins to block Facebook ads the same way we all use Firefox to block the advertising on the rest of the web.
At the heart of Cory’s complaint is the idea that Facebook tries to trap us into eyeballing the site by, for example, sending highly uninformative messages - "Bob has send you a message on Facebook, click here to read it". He believes that we’ll all give up soon enough because it’s all too annoying.
I tend to agree. My research on rational addiction suggests that even heroin addicts will quit if the circumstances that led them into the habit change. If they can kick an unwelcome habit, so can Facebook users.
I’m afraid Cory may be revealing far more about Cory than any problem with Facebook.
While the thirty-something Cory may find constant “pointless” e-mails from Facebook annoying, the original user base of Facebook (i.e. college students) seem to delight in them, even going so far as to get the e-mails forwarded to their mobile phones.
I would submit that what Cory and others of next generation up are missing is how important Facebook can be to signal social status, even for otherwise refined and mature twenty-somethings.
Posted by: Jeff H. | November 30th, 2007 at 12:17 pm | Report this commentThose “pointless” e-mails from Facebook? Go to “My Account | Notifications” and you can specify when you should be sent them. If you find them annoying, they are easily turned off.
Posted by: Sol | November 30th, 2007 at 2:17 pm | Report this commentThe added value of facebook compared to mobile SMS is displaying its social network to others. So at its core, it is really about dealing with social insecurity.
While it matches well teenagers needs, after few years the website will end up having the reputation of being the homebase of socially unsecured individual or loosers (like match.com for dating).
Posted by: Christophe | November 30th, 2007 at 2:31 pm | Report this commentFaceBook? ShmaishBook! Who really gives a tinker’s cuss? Oh, I forget, the fat cat corporates who see it as another revenue stream. Social networking? Anti-social networking more like, matey! Perfect for the morons who sit and walk around twenty-four/seven with their mobile telephones glued to their empty mindless skulls. Of course it will fade away, only to be reborn with some other young-person-trap guise. Let them have their fun!
Posted by: FreeThinkingLiberal | November 30th, 2007 at 4:20 pm | Report this commentWhile I was originally sucked into the FB addiction, I quickly left it alone, reduced my page to nothing but lies and inaccuracies and hoped that that person I hadn’t been in touch with for 10 years would go away - my wife went one stage further and signed off forever. My addiction programme hasn’t reached that far yet.
Posted by: Stuart | November 30th, 2007 at 5:01 pm | Report this commentEconomists are a conservative bunch, it would seem. Facebook is really useful to organize events and file pictures. Just these reasons are enough for it (or a similar service) to survive. Organizing events and sharing pictures requires a social network to be built before the service becomes useful.
Only time will tell if other psychologically important or addictive features will make the service even more useful. How much money they can make with this service is another story. Probably not that much…
Posted by: Martin | November 30th, 2007 at 5:01 pm | Report this commentNothing like a good Facebook post to get everyone excited… Like all good economists, I think the answer is “we’ll see”. And it’s true that oldsters like Seamus, Cory and I probably don’t “get it”.
Posted by: Tim Harford | December 2nd, 2007 at 3:58 pm | Report this commentBut I do think Sol has missed the point. Sure, you can turn off the notifications from Facebook: but that means you don’t know when you’ve received a message. A more helpful service would forward you the content of the message. Without that feature (have I missed it?), you’re dealing with a platform that underperforms in order to get eyeballs. (Sadly, not uncommon on the interwebs.) It’s email for me, thanks.
Tim, it’s not that you are too old for Facebook (34 is not that old), but rather that your friends are too old. I’m 30 but hang out mostly with 20 somethings. I didn’t want to join Facebook either, but that meant missing out on invitations for social events. By the way, I’m enjoying The Undercover Economist (your book) currently: it’s very well written, accessible and entertaining.
Posted by: Martin | December 2nd, 2007 at 8:26 pm | Report this commentWell, Tim, you called for it and Facebook answered.
E-mail messages now not only notify you of the message, but also provide you with its full text as well.
As far as I’m aware, this feature was just made available in the past few days.
Posted by: Jeff H. | December 8th, 2007 at 1:12 pm | Report this commentWhat? I have c.600 contacts on facebook. It’s easy to communicate using facebook (and fun: wall, messaging, groups); you can share photos; you can share WHAT YOU DO (news-feed is an Amazing idea!!!) with friends
- best of all, what you show &how much of it ALL depends on your preferences, thanks to the built-in flexibility of facebook privacy.
users spend more time on fbk than ANY other www website (google etc…) &log on more frequently..
It is the MOST captive and persuasive technology. It will stay. I have friends who are already switching from myspace etc… to facebook and getting other to do it too
Plus: the facebook platform for web-developers makes it unique on the internet-scale, a new form of app-programming (even I, an economist, can do it)
I suggest you look at the following site:
http://credibilityserver.stanford.edu/captology/facebook/
enjoy!
Please write a follow-up to this article of yours after facebook’s IPO
Posted by: Roberto | December 10th, 2007 at 10:33 am | Report this commentTim,
I don’t consider Facebook to be an unwelcomed habit, but a mobile utility that I can use to connect with my friends. I personally find a tremendous amount of value in Facebook because I was an early adopter, adding the service in September 2004 when it was first made available to my University. For me, it gave me an opportunity to stay in touch with my college friends and reconnect with friends that I had in high school.
IMHO, what sets Facebook apart is its distinct set of privacy controls. Almost every aspect of your profile can be turned on or off, limiting who in the community can find out information about you. The privacy controls are also extensive enough to remove people from search results completely, if that is their choice. While this does not address the “big brother” aspect of Facebook, I would prefer my data being “watched” by a company whose founder is known for its global philanthropy (Microsoft) as opposed to a company that buys carbon emission credits so its leadership team can fly multiple aircraft (Google).
Posted by: David Litsky | December 14th, 2007 at 4:36 pm | Report this commentFacebook may boast millions of registered users but not many of those millions are active regular users. I know many people who have only used it once or twice and then the account is dormant, on Myspace there are millions of dormant accounts, just look at the dates on random profiles and see how long ago it was last logged into. Facebook will go the same way as Myspace. Besides, what is there to actually do on facebook? Apart from spying on old schoolmates like friendsreunited. Are we suppose to be trying to pick up strangers for sex on Facebook? Is that what we’re suppose to be doing? I can’t see the point of it thats why I closed my account within 2 months of registering only to find that I can’t terminate my account, I can only suspend it, thats another reason why you shouldn’t register on facebook, facebook keep a log of all your activities on your account, it can’t be deleted, once you register, facebook own you.
Posted by: khkfhkehfke | February 7th, 2008 at 11:04 pm | Report this comment