The Psychology of Facebook Examined

jg21 writes "In this analysis of the psychology of Facebook, a British FB user makes some telling points about how simple the reasons behind its success are. Among them, fear of 'online social failure' features prominently. From the article: 'Facebook also digs away at the insecurities in people...your peers can see your profile on Facebook, and while they may have 50, 100, 200 friends they will mockingly see that you have a pathetically small number, confirming your worst fears about the low opinion they have probably held of you over all those years etc.'"

I don't have to worry about this

[eln]

I have 2,874 friends on MySpace, and they are all super cool. All the women are constantly trying to get me to look at them naked (girls, please, one at a time! I'm not a machine!) and the guys are always trying to give me free stuff (iPods, Wiis, you name it!). I am truly blessed to have so many generous and caring friends.

Re:Executive Summary

[Dancindan84]

See, that's why you should be like everyone else and not RTFA.

Re:The real reason

[wallyhall]

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comici d=877 [phdcomics.com]

I see this every day. For real.

large number of friends?

[gbjbaanb]

while they may have 50, 100, 200 friends they will mockingly see that you have a pathetically small number,

They can see I have a pathetically small member?!? I *knew* I shouldn't have bought that webcam.

Oh.. number... sorry... :-)

Well, who cares if I don't have any friends - I mean, why else would I be using Facebook.

* disclaimer: I happen not to have a webcam, or use Facebook. And fortunately I was blessed by God. Still don't have any friends though, why else would I be posting on /. ?

Oh noes!

[mecenday]

You have more strangers in your friends list than I!

Re:I don't have to worry about this

[phatvw]

Wow you are popular!

Does anyone remember the days where having your own website on Geocities or whatever automatically made you a big nerd? Man, I even had my own free top-level domain name back then... If only I knew how cool that actually was, I could have built a an empire and I would be getting mad p-ssay!

Re:50 friends

[MillionthMonkey]

You already have fifty friends. To add more friends, please first select one or more of your existing friends and drag them to the Dead To Me folder.

NOTE: Subscribers can have up to 500 friends!
[x] Tell me more

Re:friends list envy

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Yeah, I keep it exclusive. You've got to complete a 3 page off line application with supporting letters written by two friends already accepted. Got to keep the riff raff out you know.

Re:Who Cares?

[Icarus1919]

I don't know if it's a good thing to find a new mother online...

Re:Executive Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Facebook fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of Facebook for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy 17 friends from one group on the site to another group. 20 minutes. At home, on my Orkut account, which by all standards should be a lot slower than Facebook, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.

In addition, during this transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Notes is straining to keep up as I type this.

I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on Facebook, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen Facebook run faster than its social networking counterparts, despite Facebook's faster Web 2.0 architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs Orkut faster than this 300 mhz machine does Facebook at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Facebook is a superior social networking site.

Facebook addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use Facebook over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.

Re:Who Cares?

[multipartmixed]

> I actually met my girlfriend, soon to be wife and mother online,

Dude, that's gross.

Where do you live, in a trailer park or something?

Re:low friend count?

[whyde]

Definition of "freind":

• Web 2.0: Someone who recognizes your name and is willing to click a mouse button.
  
• Reality: Someone who will help you move.
  
• Fiction: Someone who will help you move the body.
  

Re:Who Cares?

[Dr. Cody]

I actually met my girlfriend, soon to be wife and mother online,

I've seen plenty of people mentioning their girlfriends on Slashdot, but until now I had never yet seen anybody mention they knocked up an internet lady for ePenis++.

Re:50 friends

[jagdish]

Actually, 64 friends ought to be enough for anyone.

Re:Executive Summary

[excelsior_gr]

All friends are REAL, unless declared INTEGER.