FACEBOOK RULES THE WORLD by Michael S. Malone
While you were posting vacation photos and messaging your friends, Facebook just became the world’s fourth largest “nation.”
Pause for a moment to consider that fact. In the last year, Facebook, the social networking site to which you likely already belong, has seen its membership rolls triple in the last year . . .to a total of 300 million members. And, if those trends are continuing, Facebook today will add another 3 million members – that is, the population of a city the size of Berlin, Madrid or Buenos Aires – today.
Three hundred million members is a mind-boggling number. In terms of population, it would put Facebook on the list only behind China, India and the United States – and just above Indonesia, Brazil and Pakistan. It is almost as big as the entire population of the European Union, of sub-Saharan Africa, or South America. And, incredibly, it is equal to the entire population of the world in 1000 A.D..
Facebook, of course, isn’t really a sovereign nation. Still, one could make the case that at least to millions of young people – who visit the site a dozen or more times per day, take their cultural cues from the site, use it as their communications infrastructure to their social groups, and define their self-worth by how they are rated by others on the site – it is has become a de facto, virtual, second country to which they owe a special kind of allegiance.
The cultural side of technology revolutions have a tendency to sneak up on us. We see the tech, of course, but technology by its very nature tends to be personalized, i.e. mass customizable. When you shop on eBay for that special piece of 19th century Limoges china or original Beatles for Sale LP, the experience is intentionally intimate and personal. You discover that there are four items for sale, offered at different prices by four different sellers. It is all, by design, the virtual version of walking up to four vendors at a flea market. Only if you look closely do you realize those four sellers are scattered across North America, perhaps even the world.
But even if you notice that astonishing geographic scope, it is unlikely that, viscerally, you also appreciate the fact that beyond your little on-line room where this transaction is taking place, there are literally millions of other little rooms where other transactions like yours are also taking place at this very moment. That there are whole regions of eBay – vast sub-markets selling parts for 1960s manufacturing process control equipment, for example – that you know nothing about, will never visit, yet are the heart of entire multi-million dollar industries. These areas are invisible to you because (unlike the natural world) you don’t have to pass through them – like the furniture department at Wal-Mart on the way to the stereo department – to get to where you are going; because the human brain can’t encompass all of these millions of items in thousands of categories, and because you don’t have even enough expertise in those arcane fields to know the right terms to search for.
This interesting cognitive phenomenon is what underlies the so-called Metcalfe’s Law. No one has yet come up with a precise definition of the law, but everyone knows that it’s true. Here’s the standard formulation: the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users. Put simply: the more people use a network the whole lot more that network is worth to them. The flip side of that is that the more people use a network, the more other people are likely to join it – and the more likely existing members are to recruit even more new members. In the five (!) years since its founding, Facebook’s most powerful marketing tool has been one teenager saying to another, “What, you’re not on Facebook? Are you kidding? Everybody is on Facebook.”
Not sure anyone will actually read this comment but I will post it in hope that it may be.
“But then something unexpected happened. Last year, as I’ve already noted, Facebook tripled its membership rolls.
If you look at the beginning of the Tea parties and the 9/12 movement you will see where Facebook’s massive increase came from. The oldsters signed up to organize and communicated in an easy and coherent way.
The new found profitability happened because oldsters will actually click through ads as opposed to youngsters who get on to blab at their peers and post yet another inane picture of themselves with their eyes crossed and or displaying a gang sign to show their street cred.
I was one of those dweebs who believed in creating my own space with my own graphics/javascript/fonts etc.
Now all I have to show for it is some broken links on the wayback machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.darkseraphim.com
LOL!
The reason Facebook is succeeding? GROWNUPS. Adults have become the single largest growth demographic on Facebook in the last year. As Adults have joined Facebook, their more mature and more conservative attitudes about monetization (IE: We understand and support Facebook making money, and are willing to allow our images to be “monetized” as the price of admission.) means that Facebook can finally turn a profit.
The reason that MySpace is failing is because it’s designed for kids and teens. Facebook is designed around the needs and wants of Adults, specifically MY generation, the Gen-Xer’s. We are people in our prime earning years. We long for a social networking site that will allow us to connect with the people we grew up with AND with our current peers. Facebook gives us that, and taps into the large social network we have built up over the years of our lives. My Space does not do that, it is designed around kids with smaller social groups and short social histories.
So go back to MySpace kids, you can join the adults on Facebook when you grow up.
We are increasingly living in a world in which we spend more time socializing and posturing our virtual life-images than actually living any life.
Thanks but, no thanks, Facebook, Twitter, and the rest…I will survive without you.
Gov Palin’s expeditious use of FACEBOOK will help its growth significantly over the coming years.
For all it’s annoyances, Facebook is still the best casual communications tool I use today. For instance, most of my far-flung family has joined and it’s far easier to share news and pictures on FB (the only exception being rare family get togethers). I’ve also renewed friendships with school friends and other friends I lost track of.
Facebook has brought people together and there’s nothing wrong with that.
How can I paste this to my FB page?
The even bigger implication is that if Facebook has finally found the Holy Grail of Web 2.0 – monetizing all of those millions of users, even if it is with cheesy ads – than the rest of that industry (Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) can do the same. And that could change the business world.
Normally I wouldn’t quibble with spelling errors but are you sure “than” is correct? I realize that Excel uses “if/than”, but I think most programming languages follow the “if/then” convention. Also, it seems to me that “then” is a more natural sounding English. Using “than” makes the sentence confusing because “than” evokes, to me, “different than the rest of the industry” and you’re discussing possible similarities, not differences.
Regarding Facebook, the question I have is how businesses can use it to make money.
“We are increasingly living in a world in which we spend more time socializing and posturing our virtual life-images than actually living any life.”
I’d agree to a certain extent, but being a computer geek like myself, I think in some ways the virtual world of Facebook actually opened up some new real world experiences. It allows me to connect in ways that I would have never understood when I first joined the site. My wife pushed me to join, and I was like whatever, but I’ve found more value in than I would’ve expected.
Fred Suggs: You are grammatically correct, and I’ve fixed it. But dude, this is the Internet. As I’ve noted before, if you want a more precisely edited version of this column, pleae feel free to read the version on ABCNews.com, where at least one, sometimes two, editors give it the once over before it sees the light of day. — Mike Malone
My 34 year-old daughter was finally embarrassed into joining Facebook when a friend of hers said, “Hey, your Dad’s on Facebook.”
I think you might be conflating the phenomenon (virtualization of identity) with the tool of the moment (facebook). Facebook is just a tool, and it can be replaced by something else in the future. Because there are no serious costs associated with starting (or abandoning) a new online identity, the numbers you cite can be very misleading. A virtual person who was created and exists solely for the sake of a specific project, an art project like obama or a political project like the tea parties, has a different online value – a different “Metcalf Value” if you will – than the hyper users who daily contribute a broad array of content. Facebook has a lot of hyper users right now (although some of those might be abandoning it) and has recently added a huge population of limited-purpose users. Having established new networks, or re-established old networks (what facebook is best for), any population group can, at will, move to a new platform, if one should become available. What will be interesting to see is what happens when people realize how much free, rich content they have contributed to facebook, and how really little they’ve gotten in return. When Mark Zuckerberg (not ‘Zuckberg’ as you wrote) takes the company public, as he intends to, and makes Googlebillions, the individual facebookers will realize that most of that money in fact belongs to them, but they’ll never see a penny of it of course. I think there already are many other places to create and grow virtual identities. And there hopefully will be more in the future. But users will have to figure out how to take control of their virtual identities and content contributions, and barter them for some other kind of value. And you know. . . I feel like I should get at least a tee-shirt for writing this comment. But I won’t. I probably made a bad decision to spend the time composing and writing this comment. Much like my bad decisions posting clever things on facebook. I think its time I tear myself away from the computer and go play ping-pong.
Great article. FB has been a tremendous communication tool for my family spread around the USA and has allowed me to connect with friends, all over the USA & some foreign countries, that I have now seen in over 30 years! It helps me know where friends live, affording me the opportunity to visit them when I travel to their neck of the world. Pray requests, b’days, anniversaries, special needs, etc. can be posted.
How exciting it was to see people respond last week to help a single mom who has lost her home. A friend of hers posted what she needed and, in a matter of minutes, most of the furnishings she needed were promised through the “Comment” page of the posting. Amazing . . . simply amazing! How many times over could this kind of story be repeated?
A friend of mine in Pakistan sent video (almost real-time) of homes being burned by extremists, illustrating some the hardships his community was facing. Yes, this could have been sent by email; however, all of his friends and all of their friends could see it right then and there w/o the troubles of a “broadcast email”.
So, for the nay-sayers, “Say-on” and live in ignorance. The rest of us will have a great time!
Well, I have a question amongst all the hoopla.
Are they counting users who have deactivated their accounts? Because accounts don’t get *deleted*, they are there pretty much forever.
But, yeah, it’s still a lot of people…
Does one count the number of lemmings going over the cliff?
Companies, political campaigns, towns, golf courses, small businesses — they ALL have FB pages. Are these counted as “people?” If so, the number of actual users of FB is grossly inflated.
I have a personal page and am setting up a political page, for example. One person … two pages.
My son has a personal page, a page for his school parties, a page for a sports group, etc. One person … many pages.
“I think you might be conflating the phenomenon (virtualization of identity) with the tool of the moment (facebook).”
Yeah…I had a virtual identity online for 15 years, on assorted platforms starting with an all-text telnet BBS/MUD, as a sort of cartoon alter ego. I signed up for Facebook to see the pictures my sisters post of their children, then people I knew virtually through other environments started to find me, then BAM–all the mystique and intrigue of the virtual world crumbled. Can’t take anyone seriously as a superhero after you’ve seen them post status updates whining about their domestic life, or posting brain-dead Marxist talking points.
Everybody is on Facebook?
Unfortunately, yes. From the Sept 14 Aviation Week & Space Technology:
“…altered Microsoft software was fashioned into cyber-weaponry and hackers collaborated on U.S.-based social-networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook to coordinate attacks on network-based targets in Georgia.”
“…The U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit (US-CCU) analyzes the Georgia war in a study published last month – only parts of which are available to the public – … [reveals] the security loopholes in applications available on social networking software that are vulnerable to many intrusion techniques.”
“…Another Striking revelation for the US-CCU reasearchers was “how quickly a common citizen can be transformed into a foot soldier in a cyber conflickt.”"
I’m an IT professional. Frankly, I don’t go near those sites.
Sorry for the typo in ‘conflict’.
300 million is a fake number.
Facebook has lots of games, where strength is measured by how many friends you sign up. Ergo, lots of fake accounts made solely to play ‘Might of Many’ and other games. Facebook turns a blind eye because it makes them look good, and it is hard to know whether the 5th account made from the same ISP is really the same person or not. It isn’t worth it to annoy somebody’s grandfather because his online actions seem like a fake account (e.g. posts no photos, looks at other people’s photos, rarely logs in, accepts all the stupid game requests from his grandkids but never plays).
I was just wondering how many of those names on Facebook are dupulicates. What is to prevent one person from havign more than one facebook account? I don’t have an account so I’m not sure how the designers prevent that.
Is there a way to verify the authencity of a person Facebook page. I konw Twitter is having major problems with fake and fraudulent accounts.
The Right isn’t the ONLY community using Facebook to link-up: know of quite a few virtual communities that communicate, in full or in part, via Facebook.
What’s interesting, is I’m finding that people are fragmenting their FB presence into a “professional” presence and a “personal” presence, and they take great pains NEVER to allow either to be linked. . .
Not knowing what I was in for, I signed up for a FB account a year or so ago. By the fifth friend request from an ex-girlfriend, I reaized that it was a disaster. I am also getting annoyed watching so-called grown-ups tend their FB garden, or whatever that thing is.
Alas, I have no interest in the world knowing the private details of my life. Since when did it become wise for the world to be able to see pictures of your wife post-childbirth? Have we all gone insane?
My prediction: FB will devolve into an e-commerce functionary within two or three years and that’s exactly where it belongs. It’s great for business but it has no place in my personal life.
As for the numbers of users, I know of two people with two Facebook accounts. I’m one of them. I’m sure the full number of multiple users is Legion, for they are many.
Michael: I have read your Facebook piece with interest. I just joined Facebook. Also I found out what you look like from Wikipedia – your photo. Now I know who I will be looking for when we have coffee.
Edna:
But I look twenty years younger when I’m in Bandon and out of the prssure cooker of Silicon Valley. Look for a far more youthful version of that wikipedia photo. . .
Mike Malone
Glad to hear that you look younger when you are in Bandon. I wish I could say the same. I seem to be a lot older since I arrived here from Riverside, CA 5 years ago. Looking forward to seeing you. Have you been following the things that are going on in the Parks and Recreation Dept in Bandon? My oldest daughter Carolyn is very active in that transformation.