So I was recently talking to a friend of mine, and he sent me the link of his blog, and he had written about how, out of the 344 friends he had on Facebook, if he met them on the road, he'd just stop and talk to some 44 of them. This sort of analysis kinda stunned me. And I tried to figure out why the guy, who had become real good friends with not only me, but my mommy also, had become so anti social all of a sudden! Turns out, he hadn't! He just had done some research, and realized Facebook was a massive waste of time!
He spoke about how he limited his profile so not many people could see it. Yes, I've limited my profile too...but can you really blame me for not wanting to let people from work know about what I do outside work. It's just weird when they would come up to me and say "so, who's that guy you are with in that picture?" More often than not, it's my brother! And I am so tired of clarifying that, and they normally just give me that "yeah, right!" look.
He also spoke about how people now click pictures, only because of the excitement of being able to upload them on Facebook, tagging various people, receiving comments/likes and all that jazz. Well, I've always maintained that clicking pictures for Facebook is a dumb thing to do! But then again, I also realized that the pictures are a great way of keeping in touch! Like recently, I uploaded a picture of me in a sari. My friend called me up and told me about how I had changed in the last 10 years. And so, a conversation that started off because of that one lame picture, went on for hours...and that is something, considering the fact that I hadn't spoken to her in almost 5 years! I don't know what's more surprising though...the fact that I spoke to her after so many years, or the fact that I hadn't spoken to her in so many years to begin with, despite the fact that she was my closest friend in school!
Apparently, he did some fancy schmancy research about what kind of people use Facebook. The results showed that people of a higher income level or with a masters degree choose a different social media (if at all they do). I agree! But it doesn't change the fact that the lower income groups still choose Facebook! And not all your friends have to be hot shot hedge fund managers with a fancy master's degree from an Ivy league college! You may have friends, who are, well, normal mid level execs, for example! Won't you wanna stay in touch with them? This may be a good time to point out that, as per 2010 data, if Facebook was a physical nation, it would be the third most populous country in the world! Also, it is projected that by August this year, Facebook would have captured 14% of the world's population. That may not seem much, but let me point out that China houses about 19% of the population of the world, India 17% and USA just 4%!!
I maintain still, that Facebook has helped me catch up with some old friends. And recently, I also managed to catch up with an old teacher of mine, the person responsible for me being so good in maths! So, yeah, I guess everyone is entitled to have a different opinion!
I really don't know the point of this. But then again, there is seldom any point to my ranting. Also, just to clarify, I'm not writing this just to say the opposite of what my friend said! I just figured it would be nice to have another stance too! In retrospect, it was his statement about having only 44 real friends out of 344 on Facebook that really snowballed into this monologue! I eventually decided to see whether this was true in my case also. So, out of the 332 Facebook friends I have, I tried to calculate how many I would actually stop and talk to, in the event of me bumping into them on the streets! I got tired after looking at the first 100...out of those, I knew I would speak to at least 95 in "the real world". Much better statistics, don't you think? Well, turns out I'm more social!
Of course, if you you want some intelligent reading, do check out the actual statistics:
http://www.thinketc.com/internet/reasons-i-quit-facebook/
Think Etc
He spoke about how he limited his profile so not many people could see it. Yes, I've limited my profile too...but can you really blame me for not wanting to let people from work know about what I do outside work. It's just weird when they would come up to me and say "so, who's that guy you are with in that picture?" More often than not, it's my brother! And I am so tired of clarifying that, and they normally just give me that "yeah, right!" look.
He also spoke about how people now click pictures, only because of the excitement of being able to upload them on Facebook, tagging various people, receiving comments/likes and all that jazz. Well, I've always maintained that clicking pictures for Facebook is a dumb thing to do! But then again, I also realized that the pictures are a great way of keeping in touch! Like recently, I uploaded a picture of me in a sari. My friend called me up and told me about how I had changed in the last 10 years. And so, a conversation that started off because of that one lame picture, went on for hours...and that is something, considering the fact that I hadn't spoken to her in almost 5 years! I don't know what's more surprising though...the fact that I spoke to her after so many years, or the fact that I hadn't spoken to her in so many years to begin with, despite the fact that she was my closest friend in school!
Apparently, he did some fancy schmancy research about what kind of people use Facebook. The results showed that people of a higher income level or with a masters degree choose a different social media (if at all they do). I agree! But it doesn't change the fact that the lower income groups still choose Facebook! And not all your friends have to be hot shot hedge fund managers with a fancy master's degree from an Ivy league college! You may have friends, who are, well, normal mid level execs, for example! Won't you wanna stay in touch with them? This may be a good time to point out that, as per 2010 data, if Facebook was a physical nation, it would be the third most populous country in the world! Also, it is projected that by August this year, Facebook would have captured 14% of the world's population. That may not seem much, but let me point out that China houses about 19% of the population of the world, India 17% and USA just 4%!!
I maintain still, that Facebook has helped me catch up with some old friends. And recently, I also managed to catch up with an old teacher of mine, the person responsible for me being so good in maths! So, yeah, I guess everyone is entitled to have a different opinion!
I really don't know the point of this. But then again, there is seldom any point to my ranting. Also, just to clarify, I'm not writing this just to say the opposite of what my friend said! I just figured it would be nice to have another stance too! In retrospect, it was his statement about having only 44 real friends out of 344 on Facebook that really snowballed into this monologue! I eventually decided to see whether this was true in my case also. So, out of the 332 Facebook friends I have, I tried to calculate how many I would actually stop and talk to, in the event of me bumping into them on the streets! I got tired after looking at the first 100...out of those, I knew I would speak to at least 95 in "the real world". Much better statistics, don't you think? Well, turns out I'm more social!
Of course, if you you want some intelligent reading, do check out the actual statistics:
http://www.thinketc.com/internet/reasons-i-quit-facebook/
Think Etc
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