Why Facebook?

In this post I would like to ask myself a question why did Facebook became a world phenomenon and what was the main difference from Friendster, etc. that contribute to its today’s popularity? I will also focus on convergence of different form of communication and people interaction.

Nowadays, more and more people are using Social networks at least once a day. If I have to be reflective I can admit that I am checking up Facebook every time I am using any computer, no matter where I am and what I am doing. I can even say that I became addicted of using it and checking up newest posts, pictures and all others ‘social activities’.

 

Facebook launched in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg. First was invented just for Harvard students but very quickly expanded to other universities.

Facebook by the numbers: 1.06 billion monthly active users

To analyse a phenomenon of the Facebook I need to define the critical difference of social network from the other communications interactions such as using phone. There is a three basics features that can be similar to all interactions:

-creating profile

-adding contacts

-interact with those contacts

All of the above can easily regard telephone interactions but for the social communication the critical difference is that our activity can be more or less visible to others.

The first reason why Facebook was different from other social networks was the option for user to create ‘groups’. This function allowed users to gather around different topics of shared interests. The network itself is structured around individual users, with each ‘at the centre of their own community ’ (Boyd and Ellisions)

The next reason is that Facebook administrators allows creating music pages, celebrities, commercial profiles, fake user profiles and so on, while Friendster which community grew very quickly was aggressively deleting profiles.

Facebook extraordinary growth is an illustration of Metcalfe’s Law (observation) that:

The value of communication network increases proportionately to the square of the number of people that are connected to it.

Explanation for that is easy, for example is only one person has a phone is not very useful but when ¾ people around me has phone too, it becomes much more useful. And if everybody has a phone, it changes to be essential. 

This can be the best explanation why Facebook became so dominant in a world of social media. 

More information and data about Facebook number you can find here:
 http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57566550-93/facebook-by-the-numbers-1.06-billion-monthly-active-users/

Reference:

Meikle, G. & Young, S. (2012) Media Convergence: Networked Media in Everyday Life. London: Palgrave Macmillian. Chapter 3, 'From Broadcast to Social Media'.  

[WWW] Available From:   http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57566550-93/facebook-by-the-numbers-1.06-billion-monthly-active-users/ 
[Accessed 20/03/2013]