Tag Archives: Facebook

Facebook moving toward users being able to “treat their life as a 24/7 reality show”

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Wired looks at some of Facebook’s recent changes and future plans and summarizes their intentions:

Combined with other Facebook recent announcements — “friend lists” that help you classify your contacts into groups, a Ticker that gives updates from your cohorts as they happen,  and changes in the newsfeed to make it more reflective of what your close friends are doing — Facebook is not so subtly doubling down on its ambitions to enable people to shed the pre-digital cloak of isolation and treat their life as a 24/7 reality show, broadcast to those in their social spheres.

Remember when Time named “you” as the person of the year for 2006, before Facebook had swept across the planet? Here is how the story described the effect of the Internet:

It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It’s about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people’s network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

This is a more hopeful vision than what Wired offers where individuals can produce and star in their own reality show.

The fulcrum on which Facebook’s future might hinge is whether it is able to help people forge new connections  or whether people continue to hunker down in their existing social groups. The desire that Facebook users would forge new connections is not surprising if you have read sources like The Facebook Effect that highlighted the company’s goals of opening up the world. While research studies still suggest that the majority of Facebook contact and relationships exist between people who already know each other prior to Facebook, perhaps this will change due to Facebook’s interface changes as well as the growing cultural acceptance of conducting our social lives through this online realm. Or perhaps we are destined to live in a world where our highest goal is to become individual celebrities.

Majority of young adults “see online slurs as just joking”

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A recent survey of teenagers and young adults suggests that they are more tolerant of offensive or pejorative terms in the online realm:

Jaded by the Internet free-for-all, teens and 20-somethings shrug off offensive words and name-calling that would probably appall their parents, teachers or bosses. And an Associated Press-MTV poll shows they don’t worry much about whether the things they tap into their cellphones and laptops could reach a wider audience and get them into trouble.

Seventy-one percent say people are more likely to use slurs online or in text messages than in person, and only about half say they are likely to ask someone using such language online to stop…

But young people who use racist or sexist language are probably offending more people than they realize, even in their own age range. The poll of 14- to 24-year-olds shows a significant minority are upset by some pejoratives, especially when they identify with the group being targeted…

But they mostly write off the slurs as jokes or attempts to act cool. Fifty-seven percent say “trying to be funny” is a big reason people use discriminatory language online. About half that many say a big reason is that people “really hold hateful feelings about the group.”…

It’s OK to use discriminatory language within their own circle of friends, 54 percent of young people say, because “I know we don’t mean it.” But if the question is put in a wider context, they lean the other way, saying 51-46 that such language is always wrong.

This would seem to corroborate ideas that anonymity online or comments sections free people up to say things that they wouldn’t say in real life. Perhaps this happens because there is no face-to-face interaction or it is harder to identify people or there are few repercussions. In the end, the sort of signs, verbal or non-verbal cues, that might stop people from saying these things near other people simply don’t exist online.

I would be interested to see more research about this “joking” and how young adults understand it. Humor can be one of the few areas in life where people can address controversial topics with lesser consequences. Of course, there are limits on what is acceptable but this can often vary by context, particularly in peer-driven settings like high school or college where being “cool” means everything. These young adults likely know this intuitively as they wouldn’t use the same terms around parents or adults. Are these young adults then more polite around authority figures and save it all up for online or are they more uncivil in general as some would argue?

For an important issue like racism, does this mean that many in the next generation think being or acting racist is okay as long as they are among friends but is not okay to exhibit in public settings? Is it okay to be racist as long as it is accompanied by a happy emoticon or a j/k?

Knowing that this is a common issue, what is the next step in cutting down on this offensive humor, like we are already seeing in many media sites’ comments sections? And who gets to do the policing – parents, schools, websites?

Juror becomes Facebook friends with defendent during trial and is dismissed from the case

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There are times to friend people on Facebook and times not to. One of the times to refrain should include when you are on a jury and you want to be Facebook friends with the defendant:

Jurors and defendants are not meant to be friends — even if it’s just Facebook friends.

Four charges of contempt of court probably drilled this point home for 22-year-old Jonathan Hudson of Arlington, Texas. While on jury duty, Hudson sent a Facebook friend request to the female defendant in the case.

He was dismissed from the proceedings following the friend request, as well as for posting case information on his profile. Afterwards, he contacted the defendant through a Facebook message to apologize…

His lawyer told the paper the mistake was “a reflection of the times.”

I’m sure someone could develop a defense for this: being Facebook friends isn’t the same kind of friendship that might compromise a decision in a court case. But that then gets into the interesting area of what exactly it means to be a friend on Facebook.

If this is a “reflection of the times,” it suggests people have difficulty knowing when using newer technologies, like Facebook or texting, is appropriate. The courtroom is probably one of the more conservative institutions where it takes some time to change behavior norms. Would Facebook ever be incorporated into courtroom and trial behavior? What if jurors had electronic devices that they could use to interact with each other as they are hearing cases?

More on examining six degrees of separation on Facebook

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I noted earlier this week that Yahoo and Facebook are conducting an experiment to see how interconnected people are the world are. Here are some more information about the experiment that was revealed in an interview with Yahoo sociologist/research scientist Duncan Watts:

  • On the quality of Facebook’s data:

Cameron Marlow, Facebook’s research scientist and “in-house sociologist,” said that because Facebook’s social graph is essentially the best representation of real world relationships available, “our data can speak more definitively to this question than anything else in history.

Facebook has a treasure trove of information that could be the source of some fascinating research. Does this study signal the start of a new era where researchers will be able to have access to profiles? Will Facebook users, often worried about privacy, stand for this?

  • Watts on the problems in past replications of Milgram’s original experiment:

The problem that all of the experiments have had—and the problem that we’re trying to address with this one—is that you never really know what the ground truth is. You know that there’s some network out there involved that connects people, and you know that messages are being passed along on top of this network. The problem is because you can’t see the network underneath them, you don’t know whether people are making the right choices, you don’t know if the chains are as short as possible, and you don’t know why the chains that aren’t completing are stopping.

The major difference here is that Facebook [is] the network over which these messages are being passed. We can see through Facebook how everyone is really connected to everyone else. We can see whether people can actually find these short paths. In previous experiments you were missing this background picture, but now we have the background and we can run the experiment on top of it.

It sounds like past experiments allowed researchers to see the outcome – how many letters reached the target – but didn’t allow them to trace out the paths, either successful or unsuccessful. Being able to see behind the curtain could also reveal some insights about the speeds of certain networks.

  • On whether the data is representative:

There are two issues here. You might be concerned that the Facebook network is somehow an unrepresentative sample of the real social graph of the world. The other concern is the people participating in the sample might be an unrepresentative sample of Facebook. I’m not worried about the first concern. Facebook has 750 million users. If it works on Facebook, it’s increasingly difficult to argue that it wouldn’t work for the rest of the world. But the second problem is one that we’re concerned about. It’s really just a matter of getting a broad enough recruiting effort.

I bet there are people who could make a good case that this data is not representative. These same issues plague web surveys: who has consistent access to the Internet and who can be recruited? I would guess that Facebook still skews younger and more educated than the general population.

Watts suggests the results will be published in an academic journal. It will be interesting to read about the outcome and how this is viewed by academics.

Redoing Milgram’s degrees of separation experiment with Facebook

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Stanley Milgram is best known for one particular experiment but another of his experiments is being replicated with new technology:

Yahoo and Facebook are setting out to test the hypothesis that anyone in the world is connected to anyone else in just six steps.

The experiment aims to prove or disprove that which was first suggested by Harvard sociologist Stanley Milgram when he asked 300 people to get a message to a Boston stockbroker using their personal networks.

Only about 60 of the messages reached their target, with the average number of steps in the chain being six – coining the phrase ‘six degrees of separation’.

Yahoo’s research department is aiming to replicate that experiment, this time using Facebook, which has 750 million users worldwide.

If you go to the official page, you can then choose to participate. But before you can, you have to agree to a “Terms of Use” and four other statements. This is essentially the “informed consent form” for the experiment.

Also, the “Terms of Use” provides this description of the project:

The purpose of this study is to test a long-standing theory in sociology that everyone on Earth is connected together in a giant social network. In this experiment, participants called “Senders” forward messages to their Facebook friends in an attempt to reach a given “Target” individual, about whom they are given certain identifying information, in the shortest number of steps possible.

I can’t say that I have heard this specific sociological theory but I would be interested to see the results.

If you want to read a short (several paragraph) description of Milgram’s initial experiment, find it here.

Since corporations like Yahoo, Google, Facebook, and others are sitting on treasure troves of data, can we expect to see more experiments like this in the future?

New “friend prediction program” based on the places one visits

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Three researchers have developed a “friend prediction program” that accounts for the locations someone visits:

Through an extension of the “long-standing sociological theory” people who tend to frequent the same places may be similarly-minded individuals, Salvatore Scellato, Anastasios Noulas, and Cecilia Mascolo, have developed a friend prediction program based on the places people visit.

Sites such as Facbook and LinkedIn often suggest friends based on a ‘friend of a friend’ approach but now it could be based on where users ‘check in’.

The system would also use different weightings for places like gyms – where people frequent – as opposed to airports, where people visit only occasionally…

They discovered about 30 per cent of social links developed because of people visiting the same places.

It sounds like location is not everything when it comes to forming friendships but it does play an important role.

I don’t know if many people think about why they are friends with the people they are friends with but I suspect one argument might emerge: we choose to be friends with our friends. Such a story would fit with tales we tell about finding romantic partners. It gives agency to each participant and suggests each person found the other to be likeable. But perhaps another story might emerge as well: we just sort of started hanging out together. This story would be tied to proximity: people who are placed or place themselves in particular places or situations are more likely to become friends. Some classic examples include being in a series of high school classes together, being assigned to certain roommates early on in college, starting work at a particular company. In each of these situations, people still have some room to choose their friends but their pool of possible friends is more limited by structural forces. Theoretically, you could be friends with anyone but realistically, you will come in contact with a more limited number of people in life.

Perhaps some still think that the Internet can reduce the impact of proximity by connecting people who never or rarely are in the same location. However, research suggests that most SNS (Facebook, Myspace, etc.) relationships are based on existing off-line relationships. The power of proximity will last for some time, even if most people don’t think about it.

Google+ a “sociologically simple and elegant solution”?

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According to one reviewer, Google+ takes advantage of sociological principles with its circles:

You also don’t have to ask anybody to be your “friend”. Nor do you have to reply to anybody’s “friend request”. You simple put people into the discrete/discreet spheres they already inhabit in your life…

Now, if you had asked me which company I considered least likely to come up with such a sociologically simple and elegant solution, I might well have answered: Google.

Its founders and honchos worship algorithms more than Mark Zuckerberg does. (I used to exploit this geekiness as “color” in my profiles of Google from that era.) Google then seemed to live down to our worst fears by making several seriously awkward attempts at “social” (called Buzz and Wave and so forth).

But these calamities seem to have been blessings. Google seems to have been humbled into honesty and introspection. It then seems to have done the unthinkable and consulted not only engineers but … sociologists (yuck). And now it has come back with … this.

Why exactly do algorithms and sociological principles have to be in opposition to each other? It is a matter of what informs these algorithms: brute efficiency, sociological principles, something else…

Ultimately, couldn’t we also argue that the sociological validity of Google+ will be demonstrated by whether it catches on or not? Facebook may not be elegant or “correct” but people have found it useful and at least worthwhile to join(even if some loath it). Perhaps this is too pragmatic of an answer (if it works, it is successful) but this seems to make sense with social media.

This reminds me as well of the idea expressed in The Facebook Effect (quick review here) that Facebook wishes to reach a point where people are willing to share their information with lots of people they may not know. If this is still the goal, Google+ then is more conservative in that people can restrict information by circle. I suspect it will be a while before a majority of people are willing to go the route suggested by Facebook but perhaps Facebook is being more “progressive” in the long run by trying to push people in a new direction.

The troubles with studying Facebook profiles at Harvard

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Many researchers would like to get their hands on SNS/Facebook profile data but one well-known dataset put together by Harvard researchers has come under fire:

But today the data-sharing venture has collapsed. The Facebook archive is more like plutonium than gold—its contents yanked offline, its future release uncertain, its creators scolded by some scholars for downloading the profiles without students’ knowledge and for failing to protect their privacy. Those students have been identified as Harvard College’s Class of 2009…

The Harvard sociologists argue that the data pulled from students’ Facebook profiles could lead to great scientific benefits, and that substantial efforts have been made to protect the students. Jason Kaufman, the project’s principal investigator and a research fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, points out that data were redacted to minimize the risk of identification. No student seems to have suffered any harm. Mr. Kaufman accuses his critics of acting like “academic paparazzi.”…

The Facebook project began to unravel in 2008, when a privacy scholar at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Michael Zimmer, showed that the “anonymous” data of Mr. Kaufman and his colleagues could be cracked to identify the source as Harvard undergraduates…

But that boon brings new pitfalls. Researchers must navigate the shifting privacy standards of social networks and their users. And the committees set up to protect research subjects—institutional review boards, or IRB’s—lack experience with Web-based research, Mr. Zimmer says. Most tend to focus on evaluating biomedical studies or traditional, survey-based social science. He has pointed to the Harvard case in urging the federal government to do more to educate IRB’s about Web research.

It sounds like academics, IRBs, and granting agencies still need to figure out acceptable standards for collecting such data. But I’m not surprised that the primary issue that arose had to do with identifying individual users and their profiles as this is a common issue when researchers ask for or collect personal information. Additionally, this dataset intersects with a lot of open concerns about Internet privacy. Perhaps some IRBs could take on the task of leading the way for academics and other researchers who want to get their hands on such data.

It is interesting that these concerns arose because of the growing interest in sharing datasets. The Harvard researchers and IRB allowed the research to take place so I wonder if all of this would have ever happened if the dataset didn’t have to be shared where others could then raise issues.

I understand that the researchers wanted to collect the profiles quietly but why not ask for permission? How many Harvard students would have turned them down? I think most college students are quite aware of what can happen with their profile data and they take care of the issue on the front end by making selections about what they display. The researchers could then offer some protections in terms of anonymity and who would have access to the data. Or what about having interviews with students who would then be asked to load their profile and walk the researcher through what they have put online and why it is there?

Facebook information and privacy: enticing or overwhelming?

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There are a lot of users of Facebook and similar sites. One of the primary concerns of users is privacy: who can see their personal information and how it might be used. Two commentators talk about how users respond to this issue:

Sociologist Nathan Jurgenson has an interesting post about Facebook and his skepticism about proclamations of the end of privacy and anonymity. He deploys the postmodernist/poststructuralist insight that each piece of information shared raises more questions about what hasn’t been said, and thus strategic sharing can create different realms of personal privacy and public mystery.

We know that knowledge, including what we post on social media, indeed follows the logic of the fan dance: we always enact a game of reveal and conceal, never showing too much else we have given it all away. It is better to entice by strategically concealing the right “bits” at the right time. For every status update there is much that is not posted. And we know this. What is hidden entices us.

I think this is missing the point. I feel like I need to use all caps to stress this: LOTS OF PEOPLE DON’T WANT ATTENTION. They don’t want to be enticing. Privacy is not about hiding the truth. It’s about being able to avoid the spotlight…

Social media confronts us with how little control we have over our public identity, which is put into play and reinterpreted and tossed around while we watch—while all the distortions and gossip gets fed back to us by the automated feedback channels. Some people find this thrilling. Others find it terrible. It’s always been true that we don’t control how we are seen, but at least we could control how much we had to know about it. It’s harder now to be aloof, to be less aware of our inevitable performativity. We are forced instead to fight for the integrity of our manufactured personal brand.

Jurgenson seems to be referring to the impression management work done by users who are able to craft their image. Most users know that certain pieces of information can hurt them, such as unpleasant photos, so they don’t include that information. Even more so, users try to present a positive image of themselves with generally happy pictures and an acceptable set of interests and activities. And there is a lot that is hidden: I would guess that a majority of users post pretty infrequently. This impression management, reminiscent of Goffman’s front-stage/back-stage dichotomy, has been well established by researchers.

Rob Horning, responding to Jurgenson, suggests that Facebook exposes “how little control we have over our public identity.” This may be true: even small pieces of information might present problems. Additionally, I think he is right in saying that a lot of users don’t want attention: they simply want a low-maintenance way to connect with current and past friends.

But, I would argue that users have a good amount of control over their “public identity” on the Internet. To start, they don’t have to participate and a sizable minority does not. It seems like the easiest way to lose control over what is available on the Internet is to post it yourself, whether on Facebook or a blog or Twitter feed or somewhere else. Second, even if one does participate, Jurgenson suggests that much still remains hidden. There are few people who are willing to reveal everything and few who actually want to. (I’ve always wondered if Facebook users are mostly annoyed with those people who do seem to present everything, good and bad, through their profiles.) Third, one can be friends who they want, limiting who is going to see and possibly use this information. I think a lot of the genius of Facebook is that users feel like they are in control of these aspects and generally resist efforts that use their information in ways that they may not desire. In the end, there are ways in which one can participate without doing much or exposing much.

Horning’s conclusion is interesting: “It’s harder now to be aloof, to be less aware of our inevitable performativity. We are forced instead to fight for the integrity of our manufactured personal brand.” Perhaps this is the real issue, not privacy: since we know that there are others crafting their personal image, we now have the choice to keep up or not. It is not quite a competition but rather mediated social interaction where we can see how others (and they can see how we) “put ourselves together” online. The SNS realm is now another social realm to worry about and it is hard to get away from: did I post a witty enough comment? Is that picture flattering of me? Should I be Facebook friends with that person I never really talked to? These decisions may be consequential…or they may not.

Facebook loses users in the US, UK – what does it mean?

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Facebook has had a meteoric rise – but there are some signs that the growth is slowing:

Fearing for their privacy or perhaps just bored with using the site, 100,000 Britons are said to have deactivated their accounts last month.

And Facebook fatigue seems to be catching. Six million logged off for good in the U.S. too, figures show.

Worldwide, the rate of growth has slowed for a second month in a row – and as it aims to reach its goal of one billion active users, Facebook is having to rely on developing countries to boost its numbers…

‘By the time Facebook reaches around 50 per cent of the total population in a given country, growth generally slows to a halt,’ [Eric Eldon] explained.

This article is rife with speculation: users could be upset with privacy, people could be fatigued or bored with Facebook, etc. Here are a few of these scenarios with my own thoughts:

1. There are only so many people in the world who will use Facebook anyway. It requires using the Internet consistently, whether this is by computer or some mobile device. While it may be “normal” for the younger generations (though the user rate is not 100% here either), it is used less by older generations (even though there has been growth among these sectors). I wonder what sort of saturation point Facebook itself predicted.

1a. Is it really a big deal if Facebook’s growth is now concentrated in developing countries? Is this really any different than many other American companies?

1b. Perhaps we have entered Facebook’s “mature” stage where they can no longer coast based on word-of-mouth and spectacular growth and now need to fight for new users. How long until we see Facebook TV ads trying to entice new users?

2. The article suggests the novelty of Facebook might be wearing off. Perhaps it doesn’t have enough new features – even though the changes in recent years have induced much hand-wringing, it really hasn’t changed that much. Perhaps it has too many people on there and is no longer exclusive enough – this point was driven home by The Social Network as the Winklevoss’ started with a plan to capitalize on the exclusivity of Harvard.

2a. I wonder if Facebook itself is happy with the progress it has made. On one hand, it could generate a lot of money based on targeted advertising. On the other hand, there is some evidence that Zuckerberg wishes it was much more open than it is now. Even though there are no more networks, many people are still tied to friends and acquaintances and don’t wander too far beyond this. How do you connect these newer users around the world to established users or would this be a no-go among users?

2b. The day-to-day novelty of the product should consist of what one’s friends add to the site. Without interesting status updates, pictures, news, and more, what else draws users? Farmville? Making a “friend” connection is one thing – but this is not too interesting if neither side adds new information. So beyond vanity, how can users be provoked to add more?

3. I don’t really buy the privacy argument. Some people are concerned but they are concerned about privacy in a lot of other places as well. If people were really worried about privacy, there would be a lot of things that they wouldn’t do on the Internet, let alone Facebook.

4. Perhaps some people are interested in the story of Facebook losing steam. After all, a narrative where Facebook keeps rising might not be that interesting. How long until we see more stories about competitors to Facebook, like Twitter in the US, or Orkut elsewhere?

5. These numbers regarding the loss of users have no context: how do they compare to similar figures from previous time periods? Is this an increase in the number of users who have left? Certainly, not all users have continued with Facebook after joining.