In my first post on this topic, I explained my observation that I have multiple roles that I take on as I use Facebook. I ended the post by asking the question “What is it about the social networking experience with Facebook that promotes all these roles being used?” In this post I will explore some opinions born of our experiences with our Connected.info product as well as other research into the topic.
Let’s consider what drives us to have friends in the first place. Anthropologists and biologists may point to the desire for relationships as a basic instinct to reproduce to continue the species. Others will point to our evolutionary roots and claim that the pack / herd mentality of other mammals is born out of a need for security, i.e. there is security in numbers. A few generations ago, neighbors formed the basis of our “pack” and our neighborhood became a place of safety and support for those who were part of the “hood”.
As our culture has evolved and the physical threats to our existence become less, our need for “protection” may have evolved into a need for emotional protection and thus our need for friends. However, as humans move into cities and other locales where their neighbors are less likely to be our friends, and our friends more likely to live some distance from us, our need for emotional protection is less likely to be filled. So, as people have become more knowledgeable about the features of social networks, they turn to them for emotional “protection”. But, how does sharing a photo on your Facebook page get you emotional protection? At some level, what it does is nurture the connection with someone, who when you have a need for emotional protection, will be “there” for you.
From one point of view, this seems incredibly sad. Our society has become a place where people who live close by are not known well enough to depend upon and our families live so far apart that we can’t provide support for our loved ones. However, from another point of view, by sharing what we share on a social network, we tighten the bonds with those people that live farther away.
Students entering their teen years are psychologically proven to need friends. For many, their friends are more important to them then their families. When we first build Connected.info, we did not put much stock in the “friend” role, instead focusing on the role of “classmate”. After 3 months of real use, when we did our focus group sessions again, we learned that the friend role was critical to widespread use of the service. If we wanted more than just students signing in, checking their homework and grades, and signing off, we needed to integrate the idea of friends into the product.
How about our professional lives? What is it about a social network that motivates us to use it in our professional lives? Well, there is the old saying that “It’s not what you know, it is who you know”. Or, put a different way, unless someone knows you, they can not think about you when an opportunity comes along. Reaching out to colleagues, customers, and important people in your chosen field through a social network can be a convenient way to keep those people informed. However, by using the same social network for both personal and professional purposes, one runs the risk of losing credibility in the professional world. Or, worse, your personal points of view may be so divergent from someone you value as a colleague, that they may decide not to interact with you on any level. Another saying is “Religion and politics have no place in the workplace”.
For Connected.info, we went a step further. We made the tool an integral part of the “profession” of being a student and teacher. We provided workflows in the application that facilitated information sharing and supported the assignment out / submission returned model in digital space. While Facebook and MySpace do not currently incorporate tools to conduct business within the social network, it is only a matter of time before they figure out that the opportunity exists to do so.
How about being a parent? At some level, services like Facebook and MySpace when used normally, provide a way to stay close to your children when they no longer are living in your home. There are numerous examples of this – photo albums of grandchildren, etc. But, by being able to “observe” your children’s interactions with their friends, you are able to learn more about them as another adult.
With Connected.info, we again went a step further. We created features in the application to engage parents back into the learning process. We were told by high school principals that their number one issue is being able to communicate with parents during the school year. Take home flyers are lost or thrown away by the students. Email gets pushed into SPAM folders. Web sites go mostly unread. However, when a parent is able to see on a regular basis their child’s grades, homework assignments, and attendance, the dynamic changes. Answering the question “How is my child doing?” is a basic parental need, that we are able to fill. “How can I help my child do better?” is a basic parental need that the ability to easily collaborate with school officials can fill.
Finally, there is the gamer role. Well, recreation and the ability to escape from the day to day has always been a part of what the Internet is used for. Providing games that allow a player to play against and with other people has made lots of game console developers rich. Social networks allow you to have fun with the people you care about without them having to be in the same physical place as you are to do so. The Facebook game Farmville went from a few hundred users to a few million users in less than 4 months of availability. The classic definition of viral growth. What is it about the game that make playing it on Facebook better? Well, besides the fact that the social network facilitated the viral usage growth, the game incorporates your friend network into game play. This combination of game play and friend connection is very powerful. For example, the game may send a user a message that “James Brown has given you 10 apple trees to plant on your farm.” This registers as a call to play and registers as “Oh, I better plant the trees otherwise James will think I am ignoring him”. This is a very powerful tool to encourage game play. However, it can go too far. As more of your friends play the game, the number and frequency of messages increases and at some point a user will turn off the messages and eventually, lose interest in the game. It will be interesting to see how long the franchise of Farmville lasts.
I hope this series of blog posts illustrates a main point; that social networking is not really a single thing / feature / service. It is an element of many things and can have both a positive and negative impact on our use and satisfaction with on line products.
As always, we welcome your comments….
