J-scribe

Three short years ago, Mark Zuckerberg was a Harvard psychology dropout who’d invented a quirky little social networking site called Facebook in his dorm room. Today he's worth $3 billion on paper! This week the 23 year old sold a 1.6% stake in the wildly popular web 2.0 utility to Microsoft for $15 billion after that other former geek, Bill Gates, won a bidding war with Google.

Facebook is a Generation Y phenomenon which is spreading faster than a Californian wildfire but maintains super-cool status among its 50 million international adherents. Rupert Murdoch’s My Space is just so 'yesterday'! In fact, with a weekly membership growth rate of approximately 3.5 % Facebook looks set to surpass its News Corporation competitor in official popularity inside nine months. And Australia has one of the fastest growing membership rates in the world.

So, what’s so special about Facebook? Well, at this point I should declare an interest in this story. I’m an undiagnosed FB addict! A couple of years ago I was randomly poked in the arm by one of my ex-students and when I asked “What was that for?” she answered excitedly “I’m poking you…you know, like on Facebook!” No, I didn’t know. She explained that FB was a social networking site where you effectively had your own webpage which worked like a public diary, photo album and email facility all of which was bundled together with loads of fun, time-wasting applications…like the poking thing. More on that later. Anyway, I dismissed the phenomenon with a wave of my hand back then but fast forward to this August and I was finally persuaded to sign-up by the same ex-student, now a practising lawyer. And, guess what? I was immediately hooked.

Within 24 hours of signing up, I’d scoured FB for every person I could ever remember meeting and asked them all to be my Facebook friends. This is part of the strange appeal of FB – people collect ‘friends’ like trophies. It reminds me of a High School popularity contest and it’s got a competitive edge that appeals to my inner journalist. In fact, I’m currently engaged in an FB friends race with another former student and I’m beating the pants off her. Rebecca has 14 friends…I have 56. The fact I feel like poking out my tongue at her at this moment demonstrates both how whimsically appealing Facebook is and how much I need serious psychological help to get over this addiction!

So what's a 37 year old academic doing on Facebook? One of my young FB friends rudely wrote on my 'wall' (the graffiti-like space that you use to communicate with your network) that he didn’t think FB allowed people born before 1980 to join. But I’m not the only oldie swimming around in FB land. I have Facebook friend who’s a 51 year old journalism professor (I won’t out him here…but he knows who he is). He initially ridiculed my interest in FB, arguing he had no time for it. But who’s cross promoting his blogs, column and research site on FB now, eh? And I’ve also claimed my 53 year old Vice Chancellor (the rather hip Prof. Stephen Parker) as an FB friend after convincing him to sign-up. Mind you, I was laughed at the other night by a high-flying Chief Financial Officer when I espoused the professional networking merits and academic usefulness of FB to him. I bet him it would outstrip My Space’s value and who’s laughing now, David?

So, who’s still wondering about the ‘poking’ thing? I mentioned this double entendre in an earlier post (Techno Vibes) but to re-cap – it’s an innuendo rich action which involves you clicking on the image of a pointing finger to attract your friends’ attention or just let them know you’re thinking of them. Actually, ‘Superpoking’ has now superceded ‘poking’. With ‘Superpoke’ you can send flowers, throw a chicken or even trout-slap your mates. And just moments ago I was hugged via yet another variation on the poking applications. Trust me, it’s really a lot more fun than it sounds. (Looking for that psychologist’s number as I type)

On a more serious note, I do find Facebook to be a great tool for communicating with students and keeping track of ex-charges – an important facet of professional journalism training and mentoring. And I also make use of my FB page to incite debate about politics, promote discussion about journalism issues and research topics, and link to this blog. So, while I admit it can be a big time-wasting distraction, it really does have broader merit than the initial appearance of a bunch of loosely connected high-school cliques.

It’s also a great tool for cross-cultural communication; journalists are using it to aid research and as an adjunct to their contact books; and politicians are exploiting it as a campaign tool. Federal Labor leader, Kevin Rudd has his page open to all comers and he’s notched up 4,960 friends to date. Prime Minister John Howard also has an FB page - he isn’t showing and telling, though (I’ll let you do the political analysis on this one). And, importantly, given the criticisms levelled at Gen Y regarding their capacity to build meaningful relationships, FB is also a space where I’ve watched friendships grow and care and affection publicly expressed – that can’t be a bad thing in a world torn apart by injustice, war and terror, can it? Of course, this is a particularly Western, middle class phenomenon – poverty and poor access to 21st century communications limit the availability of FB to the developing world, where access to food, health care and fresh drinking water take priority over online social networking.

But while columns and columns are being dedicated to analyses of the FB phenomenon, and the critics emerge from the woodwork, Mark Zuckerberg can afford to sit back and count his FB friends and watch his business and his profits grow…ca-ching, ca-ching, ca-ching. Half his luck and talent.

Ps I wonder if Mark would be interested in issuing shares on a time-wasted-on-FB-basis. I know one journalism academic who could become an instant billionaire!    [read more]