Social Networking Culture: Facebook
As the generations including and following Gen Y adapt to communicating without the using their voice or facial expressions, others may find it difficult to reach younger individuals. In the coming months, other websites will be covered, but the following will be handy when using Facebook:
+ Facebook (sometimes abbreviated as FB) is a highly multicultural meeting place, since its members represent countries on all continents (approximately 175 million users, making it the most popular of social networking websites).
+ The website enables you to visualize your entire network of friends and family through a friends list and individual friends profiles, which contain basic and detailed information on a person’s life, including pictures and videos.
+ It is important to remember that Facebook thrives off constant usage, as members will engage in site activity throughout the day, as if it were a cell phone, to perpetually be in the loop of what is happening in their network. Culturally, hyper-communication has become a norm, where going for days without checking your FB account, or not having your mobile phone, is like being in solitary confinement.
+ Voyeurism, which is considered offensive and taboo in many cultures, is euphemistically one of FB’s inherent attractions and controversies. It is not typically used for professional or business communication, as the information most people put on display is of a very personal, individual nature (it is, however, oftentimes used as a promotional/networking platform for artists and entertainers, given the highly photographic foundation of the website).
+ People can ‘add friends’ to their network by soliciting friendship. This may seem bizarre to new users, but ‘friending’ another person has become a verb to describe the active pursuit of adding someone to your friends list (whether you know them or not). It is good FB etiquette to introduce yourself in a message before ‘friending’ someone, as random solicitations are usually misinterpreted, regardless of culture. One no longer requires a formal introduction by a mutual friend to make friends online, as most information about a person, e.g. interests or hobbies, is readily available knowledge.
+ The establishment of trust is one social aspect that is markedly different on FB than in reality. Some may find it very easy to trust a person they’ve never met in person because they can see their life in pictures and words on FB. Others are extremely suspicious of adding strangeres to their friends list, even if they have mutual friends. Either way, Facebook has made interaction between strangers a seemingly acceptable method of expanding your group of friends.
+ The growing hunger in internet culture to know everything that is happening as it happens is a trademark of Gen Y and subsequent “millenium” generations. This desire for instant gratification is achieved by updating your personal profile to notify friends about your current status (known as ‘status updates’), which is similar to the purpose of another networking site called Twitter.
+ The visibility of your profile can be modified to varying degrees, depending on who you’d like to see your profile and who you wouldn’t. Limiting visibility has become a very important feature of social networking, as being contacted by an overwhelming amount of people can be either a blessing or a curse.
There is much, much more to learn about the culture of online social networking. Hopefully, these tips better prepare you to interact through websites like Facebook.
