Although Facebook provides services for a very wide range of interests and needs now, I would describe the social networking site primarily as a “dynamic shared personal scrapbook.” Facebook is used, ultimately, as a means to express information about oneself, in terms of identity,memories, associations, interests, and connections. As a frame of reference, a scrapbook functions as exactly that—a collection of “pages” that share information about a person, their interests, their memories in pictures, little notes about events, short entries about various topics of interest.
The benefit of this frame is to give new users a sense of “ownership” of their Facebook profile and realize that the service exists primarily for self-expression, albeit in a social network rather than just one’s family as in the case of the scrapbook. This may allow new users to appreciate “the premises and purposes” of Facebook, according to Orlikowski, so that they may use it more effectively.
After having established a solid frame of reference for the new user, it is important to then explain the social features of Facebook that lonely scrapbooks did not have. For example, almost all the scrapbooking features of Facebook are coupled with ways in which others can add to your scrapbook, perhaps by putting in photos of you that they have, commenting on notes or Internet links. The significance of Facebook is that, in addition to expressing you as a person individually, it also expresses you as a member of your friends and acquaintances, since most social information is public.
The benefits derived from participating in such a social networking site is the same as the pleasure of reenacting stories, sharing photo albums, and swapping yearbooks, but multiplied so that any of the above activities is easily accessible, conducive to people’s very busy personal schedules, and can casually be carried out over long distances. As a return on investment (ROI) Facebook no doubt lets a participant interact more efficiently and thoroughly than in traditional social sharing models. In addition to being able to quantify the benefits of Facebook over the traditional scrapbook/photo album swap model (looking at 10 times more friends pictures of swapping 20 extra stories per week), one can measure the advantages of being part of Facebook in a much more qualitative and long-term sense, a measurement that Grudin argues is more important in evaluating technology. For example, how can one measure the benefit of seeing pictures and comments of a wedding that one is missing from different sources, uploaded via Facebook mobile, WHILE the wedding is taking place? The immediacy and simultaneity of sharing in an experience while it happens is completely different from hearing about a wedding afterwards.
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I like your explanation of Facebook as a dynamic personal shared scrapbook. That is what its like with its pictures, wall posts etc. Your explanation of its benefits were similar to my own. Facebook may not be all about productivity, there are benefits such as pleasure for staying in touch with friends, family and many others.
ReplyDeleteI like your interpretation of facebook's ROI. I too read that Grudin considers qualitative measures as basically the only way to determine if there is in fact a positive return. I had trouble determining in light of facebook what exactly these qualitative aspects would be. You're right though in considering the number of photos and stories that can be shared each week using facebook instead of another FtF medium.
ReplyDeleteWow, I didn't think at all of a scrapbook but now that you mention it, it fits so well! Rather than many other people's explanations, which combine a bunch of everyday things (e.g. an address book + a home page + etc.), this idea packages it together so nicely.
ReplyDeleteI guess my one critique would be that this metaphor probably doesn't appeal to say, businessmen. If Facebook were marketed as an online, dynamic scrapbook, this class of users might just blow it off without giving it a chance.