What is Facebook used for?
Writing about web page http://blog.compete.com/2007/09/14/facebook-activity-breakdown-application/
An interesting post on someone else’s blog pointing out which aspects of Facebook are actually being used. Lots of browsing of pictures, plenty of visits to join or visit groups, but relatively little time on the Marketplace or the Group discussion boards. So that explains why my advert for free library resources has had so little attention, and why our geeky group discussion boards only involve the usual suspects. It also supports my suspicion that people are joining groups to add to their profile like wearing a badge, and worrying very little thereafter about what it actually says about them…
Emma
Yes, I can see that. I find Facebook both intriguing – in terms of the way that people are using it, and annoying; there are some things that I don’t quite get (perhaps I’m just too old!), and other things that seem to not quite work in the way that I expect them to.
I’ve also been intrigued recently with the group that I found (by searching, didn’t have to be invited to join it), for my old school. I’ve joined it (the page lets me leave), and it says it’s open to all.
However, it never appears on my list of groups. I can’t see what’s different about it and any other group that I’ve joined.
But, I know that I too have been guilty of joining groups, because they sound interesting, and then discovering that they’re pretty dormant.
When you mention “badge”, are you talking about the sort of badges that demonstrates you’ve actually done something (like Brownie badges), or more the sort that just shows what you’re interested in. (e.g. A Greenpeace badge). From what I’ve seen, it seems to be more of the interest sort of badge – I can look at people & see if we seem to be interested in the same things; much as you might use a list of tags about a particular post.
11 Oct 2007, 14:42
Jenny Delasalle
Hi Emma,
the Greenpeace kind of badge is exactly the kind of badge I meant. I don’t think there needs to be any guilt associated with being a sleeping member of a group, but you will need to be sure that the group’s activity doesn’t make your “badge” say something about you that you didn’t intend it to… a friend of mine joined a seemingly innocent group which seemed relatively simple fun at the time she joined but which became more offensive in time.
Jen
11 Oct 2007, 15:09
Emma
Yes … I can well see that being a problem …
(I have sorted out the problem of the group for my old school not appearing to be in my list of groups. For some reason, it’s not showing under the “recently updated” sublist – even though when I finally get to see it under “All”, it tells me there are new members, new posts etc., oh well).
12 Oct 2007, 13:56
Jenny Delasalle
I’m glad you got the groups thing worked out in the end. I looked to see on a FB group that I administer whether there are any settings to control what information goes out about the group, but aside from making it visible or not, there doesn’t seem to be any way of stopping the group from appearing in the list of updated groups on someone’s groups page.
I’m not sure how FB works out what order to display your recently updated groups, because I don’t think it’s by amount of activity as such: I think it may be to do with the activity of your friends as members of those groups. For instance, a group to which I belong that is on my Network and in which the only recent activity has been that one person has joined recently, appears higher than a group on another network about Library 2.0 that loads of people have joined recently, presumably because that one person is a friend of mine… Anyway, there are presumably lots of criteria that could influence what they show you.
15 Oct 2007, 15:07
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