Type-casting my Facebook Friends
As my list of Facebook friends grows larger (I’m up to 171) and more diverse (long-lost high school friends, former church friends, relatives I haven’t seen in ages, student from the educational technology master’s program) I’ve been noticing how many different ways people use Facebook. Looking at my list of friends, the majority seem to fall pretty neatly within three groups, which I think of as Gifters, Gamers, and Updaters. When I think about my friendships outside of Facebook, I see a corresponding pattern in the face-to-face world as well.
Gifters are the people who send many virtual gifts and various other cute thoughtful things to all of their Facebook friends. These people would remember your birthday even if Facebook weren’t reminding them. In the face-to-face world, Gifters are like my late Aunt Winnie, who used to send me greeting cards for holidays I didn’t even know existed. If Aunt Winnie had made it to the Facebook Era, I bet she would have found an occasion for every one of those gazillion Pieces of Flair.
Gamers are the people who play Farmville or Mafia Wars or Scramble, or the ones who tag all their friends to compare results every time they take a quiz. I suspect that Facebook gamers like games in the face-to-face world, too. They probably watch and play sports, play board games at parties, and maybe play cards when they’re hanging out with friends. They like the challenge or the structure, or they like to be doing something and not just sitting around and talking.
Updaters, on the other hand, like nothing better than sitting around and talking. Updaters post a new status message at least once a day, they comment on other people’s status, and they respond to the friends who comment on their status updates. Some Updaters are funny, some are good at clever word play, some complain a lot, some give you tedious details of their day, but all have one thing in common: they use Facebook mainly for conversation. I suspect that updaters enjoy a good conversation when they attend face-to-face parties as well.
I’m definitely an Updater. In the face-to-face world, I’m so-so at getting birthday cards out on time and I don’t really like board games or cards. My favorite pastime is meeting a friend at the coffee shop, ordering a skinny vanilla latte, and enjoying the free flow of conversation. Facebook, for me, is like a coffee shop where I hang out with my 171 friends – friends from high school that I haven’t seen in years, friends from my hometown 700 miles away, and even a couple of “virtual friends” that I’ve only met on Facebook (after being virtually introduced by other friends). And I hang out with more than a few Gifters and Gamers, people I might not have occasion to interact with in any other venue. Now, if I could just get Facebook to serve me a good skinny vanilla latte…
Penny, I agree with your three kinds of FB friends, but I think there is a fourth kind that you may have missed – namely people like me. (Of course, there exists the distinct possibility that I may be a group of one!)
I love going on facebook to check up on people of the first and third kind. The people of the second kind, I really don’t care much about – and thankfully, FB lets me block most updates from Farmville and MafiaWars. So as far as I am concerned people of the second kind don’t really exist – since updates from these games are automatically blocked.
The group I love are those of the third kind. I love reading their updates. There are a few that are absolutely my favorites. Paul Kurf and Nicole Ellison are at the top of my list (Penny you are a close third). Their updates are accurate and smart and funny – and I truly look forward to reading what they have to say. There is an art to the FB update and they have mastered it. There is a wryness to their humor, as if they were winking at me. So I both learn about what they are upto – AND get a peek into their sensibility, their way of looking at the world. What more can one ask for – from a friend (FB or otherwise).
As for me, the fourth kind, I use FB shamelessly as a way of getting people to read my blog. I have it set up such that every blog update of mine is reflected on FB as a posting – and I follow that with a status update using FireStatus (a Firefox plugin that updates both FB and Twitter). It is a completely (as I said) shameless way of getting people to click the link and read what I have written on my blog. I spend quite a bit of time composing my blog posts and I think, especially if you are friend of mine, that it is obligatory that you read what I have written.
I wonder how many people use FB the same way?
I actually thought about that fourth type, Punya, but decided not to mention it since I was focusing on the largest groups in my own groups of friends.I have noticed a small group of “Promoters,” though. In addition to your blog updates, I have a few friends in the arts who use Facebook only to announce their concerts, theater productions, and gallery exhibits.
As for promoting your blog, I think that’s a good idea these days. Facebook has become my news reader these days, too, as I rarely think to go check my other readers to see what’s happening with all those rss feeds I subsribed to. ::hangs head in shame::