Philadelphia Real Estate Helpful News and Views

I must admit I am a newcomer (under a year) and a novice to the whole Facebook experience. Many colleagues of mine, especially in business have been Facebooking for years. With me, the jury is still out in accepting if not even understanding this new social phenomenon. So I want to open up a forum to you, to tell me

Why Do You Facebook? Fun, Business, or ADDICTION?

Or for that matter your own reason. Facebook as far as an activity is not really new. It is the old idea of writing a diary like with tasks, feelings, or a gratitude journal and extending it to a one size fits all template on the Internet in a fill in the blank format.

 

With Mark Zuckerberg, 26 year old Facebook billionaire CEO as 2010 Time magazine Man of the Year and the movie The Social Network out, Facebook is getting even more exposure. It mainly has to be thought of with amazement as it has 500 million members 70% residing outside the U.S. and the Palo Alto company says each member on average has 130 friends (direct connections).

The reason I ask why YOU are on Facebook is I find no fence sitters with the answer to this question. Other than me perhaps still wondering why? Most fully embrace it and are on it near daily, others set up the profile and are using it more day by day while the other camp, especially some seniors see no need for it. But there is a middle aged female trend that shows that demographic growing faster than others. Divorce attorneys also attribute 20% of divorces to someone linking up with some old flame or new one too.

In Greek mythology there was this hunter named Narcissus who was well known for his beauty. Being very full of pride he did not think he needed the love of others. In the forest at a deep pool he stopped to drink and admired his reflection and fell in love with himself. He could not tear himself away from the image and died from neglect of himself from his fixation. We get our word narcissism from this character. I bring this up cause our youngest generation is being described as the "Look at Me" generation and Facebook has an element to that. If it is not written down about your life you have not lived your life. So we have to question how much of narcissists we are turning into.

Another thing you hear in discussions of Facebook is consequential vs. trivial information. Do we really care what you ate for breakfast? Where you are? The weather? Who you saw? Where you slept? Who you slept with? That your dog vomited? I think this stems from releasing emotional needs, essentially to anyone, or at least your friends, like being in a psychologist office where they would ask you to tell more about you. What are you thinking about now, what frustrates you, what makes you happy? You lost your keys, good Zumba workout at the fitness club, had a bad meeting with a client. VERY SOCIAL, but also the minutiae of life. Trifling matters to most.

Then in the EVOLUTION of social media in civilization there is the move away from what was MORE PRIVATE to much more being PUBLIC. Mark Zuckerberg himself is flabbergasted that so many people give him so much private information like their birthday and the city they live in.

Yes there are business pages called fan pages. But isn't Facebook more about being SOCIAL? Social conversations can lead to relationships, shared interests and Groups, and leads for business.

The high school YEARBOOK effect of Facebook allows you to VIRTUALLY check out Bob or Susie from many years ago how they are aging, if they are more successful than you and how stable or unstable their love life has been. This probably borders on the appeal to the gossip type without having to actually go to the the reunion. A virtual social interaction without action having the person right across from you.

There is a time capsule effect too with writing on the WALL. Like a Caveman wall with hieroglyphics, it is there for posterity. All your photo albums instead of your hunted wooly mammoths.

Personally, with time as a consideration I would think you would want to live life and not document life. But maybe PART of Facebook is a form of living it but there is no doubt...

     FACEBOOK IS REALLY ALL ABOUT SELF.

                  "Why do you Facebook?"