By Sunnidhi Lal
From status updates to Farmville, Facebook has proven to be the most thriving social-networking site of them all. Status updates, the live feed, calendar events, birthday reminders, birthday presents, applications, quizzes, friend requests, inbox messages, groups, fan pages – is there any other social networking site with all of these features? Unlike the others, Facebook satisfies everyone because it is a multi-use creation. Twitter is too sparse, Myspace too disorganized, Linkedn too professional, and the school “Moodle”, well let’s face it, although you can add friends, why would you want to do social-networking on an academic site? It’s quite evident why Facebook is immensely popular. The variety of users is incredible. Even adults are starting to get into the Facebook craze.
Earlier, it was stereotyped that Facebook was just another teenage fad, along with Myspace. However, due to its ability to satisfy everyone – housewives, grandparents, middle-aged workers – people exploit Facebook’s major, principal use: to stay and touch and keep connected. Forget about the fan pages of actors and music artists and hummus and the “Random 25 things about me” notes. Facebook is mainly popular because of its easy-to-understand layout when it comes to keeping in touch. This is why it attracts the elders; grandparents may not be so fond of “new” technology but use Facebook because it is organized and simple.
With teenagers, Facebook has a completely different meaning. We all know how we love to look at the live feed and see how “Jenny dropped her phone in the toilet” and how “Kelly is chilling at Sara’s house”. We all know how we can’t get enough of stalking our best friend’s profile and, of course, the major art of bumperstickering (to the people living inside a rock: bumperstickering is the art of searching bumper stickers and adding them to your profile and sending them to your friends)! Yes, bumperstickering is an art and a skill that one can only acquire after doing it for a long time. When procrastinating and putting Dr. Pierce’s bio homework aside (or Mr. Avella’s ICP homework), the typical RPS student (or any student in general) is possibly bumperstickering to glory. While Facebook may seem like just another futile site filled with doing complete nonsense (as my mother always describes it), it does have some legitimate use for teenagers. For example, students discuss homework all the time on Facebook. It’s easy to get in touch with peers if you need to converse on academic-related topics with them (not that we do that much).
Funny, it seems, how everyone seems to enjoy Facebook in one way or another. It’s fair to say that Facebook is ageless and brings social networking to a whole new level. We can only hope that it doesn’t go out of hand and collapse due to over-use of the bumpersticker application. It’s always possible that Farmville will reach a total of five million members and will close down and wreck Facebook completely! It’s possible I am just becoming cynical, and that Facebook will actually progress as a social-networking site, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up.
December 2nd, 2009 at 7:59 pm
I agree that Facebook has taken social networking further than its competitors, but I don’t see how one can all of a sudden question its ability to survive. It seems unlikely that a site as popular and obviously advanced (technologically speaking) would be unable to handle millions of people. And let’s say this is a concern to some people. In that case, shouldn’t we be worried about Google? Facilitating over 91 million searches per day, who’s to say that Google is in any less danger of collapse?
Also, the article itself shows the enormous rate at which facebook is growing, both in users and in utilities for users to interact with. How does this make you dubious?
December 6th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Farmville has already reached 11 million users daily, and has 30 million users. Even if Facebook or Zynga (the company in charge of Farmville) couldn’t handle this amount of usage, (which it can) it would merely shut down the game, not the site itself. This is just the way of the Internet.
You outline the uses of Facebook magnificently. However, this works against your argument that Facebook will soon fall. The main attractions of Facebook, staying in touch, procrastinating, and general entertainment, are traits of modern society that will not fade any time soon. As long as there is a need for this sort of site, or until a better alternative arises, Facebook will grow…and not be “wrecked”.