Guess we all go through a love & hate relationship with Facebook and some of us may have also attempted to move out of face book, only to join it back after a few days or hours. What is it about it that makes us hate facebook as much as we love it?
Strictly going by observations of my timeline, here is a summary. And for some odd reason I am pretty sure that this statistics can be used to generalize the user behaviour across Facebook members.
- 90% of the friends only “see” Facebook. You realise they exist on this platform when they like your new profile picture. Yes, “Like” is the only thing they like doing.
- 70% of this population would surely write on their friend’s timeline wishing for their birthday.
- 85% of these would put a status of their own only once in 6 months.
- If they want to share something about them then, 95% of the friends use FB to post their newly nicely clicked pictures, 30% for status updates and around 20% for check-in status.
- Only 10% of the friends actively converse on their timelines. Converse here would mean writing a comment, asking questions, replying to general queries posted by their friends. And that’s where the problem lies.
If I can’t have a meaningful conversation with you, and I need internet to tell me where you are traveling or what you are eating or your professional achievements, then sorry dude, we are not “friends”. We are merely acquaintances.
The misplaced image of FB needs to be corrected in our minds. LinkedIn calls this “connections”, twitter calls it “followers”; the issue with FB is that it calls them “Friends”. Not everyone we have a meeting with or talk to for more than 5 mins in a day is a friend. I can’t make you my friend, because making friends doesn’t mean adding public on my timeline.
It feels weird when after looking at a picture, I have to look at the name of the person who posted it because I can’t recall seeing that person ever. The name tells me we were in school together, and I go on to like the picture. Yes, we were good buddies that time, but today there is nothing in common amongst us. But I “Should”stay connected with you.
We are living in the world of social obligation and not in a beautiful world connected with friends and relatives as defined to us!
It really pains me to see that if a friend starts her own venture or makes her own page, promotes a social cause, there are very few “Friends” who encourage her by liking/sharing/commenting. If even 50% of the people reflecting in our friend’s list were to do this, there would never be a need for a paid like or share. The message would spread on its own.
When we are not genuinely conversing with each other, when we are not supporting each other, when we are not openly sharing with each other, then why do we need a platform that only helps us stay updated to the latest looks of that person?
And that’s why Facebook is losing its value in some of us. I don’t need a medium to stay in touch with my friends. Yes, I do need one to be aware of the personal side of people whom I once met.
But for how long would I want to share my updates with people beyond my genuine friend list? The answer to this lies in the number of passive people on your timeline who would hardly share something on their own, and would only use this for liking someone’s post. Because after all, they do have an account!
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