Remember your teen years when friends defined your universe. Family was there, hobbies and sports were good, school was … school, but friends, heck, friends were important! We usually got a little more serious about life (career etc.) in our 20s, but until marriage most of us still hung out in packs. Gossip was currency.
Facebook was built to marry such group bonding to the internet. Started in 2004 by a student, Mark Zuckerberg (another failed-to-graduate-from Harvard future billionaire), for the first years Facebook was reserved exclusively for university students. It exploded in popularity, and was opened to the non-student hoi polloi in 2006. Registration was free, and open to anyone over 13 with a valid email address.
Facebook started as a simple way for people to create a page about themselves, picture and biography, then to allow others to become “friends” and view their page. Critical was the feature that let “friends” see any updates to your page, i.e., not just that you liked pepperoni pizza, cold beer and the New England Patriots, but were going to Cancun for Spring Break. Adding time-sensitive information allowed Facebook to be vibrant, something one checked often … or stayed on all day.
Trivial stuff, sure, but then aren’t most friend-friend conversations about trivial stuff? A friendship is based on the sum of a whole bunch of trivial and a scant few important details. That’s where the next feature came in, the ability to create “groups” based around similar interests. Now you could troll Facebook pages until you found a group you were interested in, join and then share trivial stuff with like-minded people.
If I sound like I am dismissive of this blame my poor writing. If anything I am awed by the genius of Facebook, building a business around the very things we take for granted.
Facebook now offers an amazing selection of applications, small little programs that allow you to write something on a person’s “wall,” “poke” someone or buy them a virtual drink. Sudoku, crosswords and for those who want privacy, scrabble and Texas Hold’em for those who want some friendly competition. And unlike online games, you are actually playing with friends, chatting and trash talking … just like if you were together. That is the brilliance of Facebook, that it allows relationships to be formed, built and nurtured just as in real life. Or “physical life” I suppose, being that Facebook is expanding our definition of reality.
This post is not long enough for all the Facebook possibilities. A few more key ones to mention though are Photo Albums and Videos, more ways for you to share with friends.
Facebook is now a demographic and global phenomenon. No longer for under 30s, the 35-54 demographic is the fastest growing user segment, 256% growth in Aug-Dec 2008, doubling every two months. Astoundingly, it is available in close to 40 languages! Why the explosive growth? Desire for intimacy I think, but that is just me: this question will spawn a generation of Ph.D. theses.
In a later post I will explore the ways Facebook might be used for business marketing. I thought it best though to start with some description of just what the Facebook phenomenon is all about.
How big is it? Well, like Google it has become a verb, to Facebook someone.