“Tag this photo!”, shouted a friend. “Tag that one!”, said another. I hear these words a lot when I carry around my black Nikon D60 while hanging out with friends at our old high school, cafes, and malls. It is as if our gathering was arranged in the first place primarily so it could be publicised on Facebook.
I accordingly upload and tag the requested photos. The photos I add are just a few out of more than 800 million uploaded to the site each month.
What is it about Facebook that makes its 150 million users sacrifice the precious time they have to upload that many pictures? A lot of factors can be attributed to this phenomenon; and uploading pictures is certainly not the only feature on this and similar sites that people make routine use of.
Other features that people can’t stay away from include the core functions such as Profile, Friends, Networks and additional applications such as Notes, Groups, Events, and Posted Items. The key to the growth of Facebook lies in the simplicity and originality of these features.
The Facebook statistics are staggering. In one month, there are more than 5 million videos uploaded; 20 million pieces of content, such as web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, and photos shared, and as many as 2 million events created.
Facebook started out in February 2004 when 20-year-old Mark Zuckerberg and his Harvard friends conceived the idea of a social networking site, originally to create a network for university students. The site became an instant success and expanded to other Ivy League universities such as Stanford, Columbia, and Yale Universities. By the end of the year, Facebook had reached nearly 1 million users.
Although displaying users’ profiles is hardly a new feature on social networking sites, the way Facebook displays them is somewhat different in that it is more subject to social interaction. The Wall feature on the Profile is a simple, effective way to communicate Facebook activities to the world. “We can talk about anything; we can even send emoticons and cute gifts,” said Karin, who logs in to her Facebook account every day.
“Ghian is now friends with Fransisca Laij”, “Ghian is excitedly waiting for a President Obama”, or “Ghian commented on his own photo”, these pieces of information are typical examples of Facebook’s Wall entries; these can be commented on and feed our need both to tell other people what have we been doing and, as we scroll through the pages of our friends, to find out what they have been doing.
However, this can also turn out to be a major inconvenience.
I certainly wouldn’t like my friends to comment obsessively on “Ghian went from being ‘in a relationship’ to ‘single’”. I wouldn’t like it either if other parties read my “Wall-to-Wall”, a feature that allows us to display our posts on a friend’s profile and read his or her replies. For the former, I can settle the issue by simply altering my privacy setting whereas for the latter, I wouldn’t even know it if anybody has attempted to do such thing.
A feature called ‘News Feed’, acts as the groundwork for our Facebook experience. It randomly picks out any friend’s activities and shows them on the Home page, thus providing us with potentially interesting information which we might want to learn more about.
The News Feed is another important element in Facebook. If you have, say, one thousand friends, it is impossible to keep track on all of your friends. This is where News Feed comes in handy; you might have been tagged on a long-awaited picture, a childhood friend might now be in a relationship with your co-worker, a group in which you are affiliated to might host an event that you might be interested in attending to. News Feed can offer that element of surprise which can easily slip through the cracks.
The Photo application is another feature crucial to the Facebook experience. The two elements that appeal to users are tag and comment. When a friend ‘tags’ you in a photo, you will be notified and be given a direct link to it. This way, the variety of photos in your profile does not entirely depend on yourself. If you feel uncomfortable with any of your tagged photos, you can simply click ‘remove tag’ and you cannot be tagged again into the same photo.
“It’s something new. You could share photos with friends and family in a click, plus you could chat and comment as much as you want with them,” said Putri, a Facebook user who has been tagged 433 times.
A unique feature that Facebook provides is its Applications. Users not only can enjoy them; they are wikis; they can create them. Most Facebook Applications are created by users around the world.
Facebook Applications has added a new dimension in social networking websites. Users can engage in activities other than commenting on a photo or posting an entry on other users’ wall. They can now send virtual plants to grow in an Application called ‘(lil) Green Patch’; they can now describe five characteristics of a friend through ‘iDescribe’; they can even arrange their own soccer team comprised of their Facebook friends through ‘Premier Football’.
“My favorite Application is iDescribe,” said Annisa, a digital native.
For digital natives, the generation that has grown up with digital technology, Facebook has become the social tool in this era of the Internet. However, they aren’t the only ones who are exploring the social networking site. The fastest growing demographic of Facebook users is, in fact, those who are 30 years old and older.
That was one of the main viewpoints that Professor Sarlito Sarwono expressed when I interviewed him about the Facebook social phenomenon.
Professor Sarwono is a well respected expert in his field. He obtained a Bachelor of Psychology degree at University of Indonesia and a Masters degree in Psychology from Leiden University. He has written dozens of books on psychology that discuss social issues, adolescent issues, and sexology issues. He has been attending international seminars for thirty years, lectured in various universities for forty years, both home and abroad, spent time at Cornell University as a visiting professor.
For a sixty four year old, he is still very much up and running. He is now a professor on the Faculty of Psychology on his almamater, UI, and on Perguruan Tinggi Ilmu Kepolisian. Professor Sarwono is still active in writing, giving speeches, and consulting. He is respected as one of the great social thinkers of this country.
“Facebook is just one of the new social tools of current young adults,” he explains. “On the other hand, it is not just for young people. I myself have a Facebook account, and among my friends are ministers, mayors, medical doctors, as well as other professionals, and my ex-students.”
Whether Facebook will endure still remains to be seen. Although the young adults comprise a hefty segment of the users, the professor is not optimistic regarding the site’s future. “Facebook will also fade out once there is a better medium or technology; it happened to Friendster.”
The rise of Facebook is driven by the concept of ‘online social playground’. People nowadays can communicate with each other through a keyboard and a glass that emits lights and colours, while having the sensation that the conversation partner is right next to us. However, chatting with friends face-to-face in a café and chatting with them through Facebook, even from a café, are completely different experiences.
“They are not similar, of course. Cyber social interactions can never replace real person-to-person live interactions,” the professor argues.
He also emphasises that Facebook cannot reach a majority of society. “Facebook is only for those who are able to access computers, particularly the Internet.” Moreover, he adds, the generation gap on the technology can also become a factor. “Not everybody is interested in learning how to operate computers.”
With the digital natives becoming increasingly plugged in to their smarphones such as iPhone and Blackberry, this ‘Facebook Revolution’ has the potential to change fundamentally the way young adults communicate or will communicate in the future. However, Professor Sarwono thinks otherwise.
“It is the Internet, not just Facebook. The possibility of virtual communication, including e-mail, blog, and etc, changed the life of all human beings, not just young adults,” he explains.
One of the main reasons why millions of Facebook users log in to the site, or to any social networking site for that matter, is because of the natural expression of human curiosity. We are curious about how other people are doing and feel the need to stay updated with the latest news, by our nature.
“Everybody needs to know what are other people doing,” the professor affirms. “When you meet somebody on the street, you will automatically ask ‘Apa kabar?’. Gossip and infotainment are some other forms of the expressions of human curiosity.”
Nowadays, Facebook has somewhat become a necessity, if you don’t want to miss all of the latest topics among your friends. For non-digital natives, Facebook presents the dilemma of jumping on the bandwagon or not. One could survive without having a Facebook account. However, going into the 21st century, the era of the Internet where the world is more connected than ever, not having a Facebook account may prove to be like living in a secluded cave, while life goes on outside.
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