Facebook Analysis

The questions posted on the assignment are important things to consider, but from my personal perspective, I feel that it's much more complicated. Each person has a variety of ways to express their identity on FaceBook. They can also control which groups of people can see what. It also depends on how savvy each person is with FB and with the changes that FB makes over time. From my own FB experience, I shall give my general analysis and then take a look at some examples.

Unlike the old Myspace, there is no top friends list unless one choses to use an application to designate the ranking of important people in their lives. Although it is not a very prominent thing on FB. I think that most prominent factors are: status updates, number of friends, comments, pictures, information/about me page, events, as well as pages/groups.

When it comes to commenting, it is evident how savvy a person is with FB if they choose to reply to a post by making another post on the person's wall, or to comment on the post itself. This drives the audience to follow the conversation on one wall only. This way, a person's private profile can control who sees the thread of comments on that post. Instead of having the other person's friends follow the thread, only people who are friends with them can see it.

Generally, more friends, comments, and pictures show a sign of popularity... as well as extreme boredom or having no life outside of the computer. Pictures on the other hand are a way to show off either one's vanity or one's fun life.

The About Me/Info page can have as much or as little information about oneself as one wishes. Groups and fan pages as well show their activism and interests. Relationship statuses is also a part of the Info, but it's quite a complicated subject for a short blog post (I might discuss it later if someone else does not beat me to it).

Some people are more conscientious about their profile than others. There are a number of my friends who rarely ever goes on and/or can care less about who sees what or to put much effort into customizing their FB. Some go one to play games, take random quizzes, or play around with applications and invite friends to also participate. I've also seen friends who claim to be "Married" to each other when in reality they are not, I can't quite put the words as to why but it's just something that's amusing and shows how close/good friends they are. Friends who are into music like to occasionally post youtube videos as well.

I shall pick 3 examples to elaborate on my next post.