Can the last person leaving Facebook turn out the lights?
Jan 15th 2008NiaLLLarkinUncategorized & clayshirky & facebook & patphelan & robinblandford
The move is on…
Robin Blandford has mostly lost interest in Facebook. Pat Phelan has left. And James Corbett closed down his account a long time ago (scroll to comments).
So what you might say? Well, i’ll hand you over to the man himself Clay Shirky from here on in. Here’s an excerpt from his (and I’ll never tire of saying this) absolutely-must-read classic-of-classics “A group is it own worst enemy”
You are at a party, and you get bored. You say “This isn’t doing it for me anymore. I’d rather be someplace else. I’d rather be home asleep. The people I wanted to talk to aren’t here.” Whatever. The party fails to meet some threshold of interest. And then a really remarkable thing happens: You don’t leave. You make a decision “I don’t like this.” If you were in a bookstore and you said “I’m done,” you’d walk out. If you were in a coffee shop and said “This is boring,” you’d walk out.
You’re sitting at a party, you decide “I don’t like this; I don’t want to be here.” And then you don’t leave. That kind of social stickiness is what Bion is talking about.
And then, another really remarkable thing happens. Twenty minutes later, one person stands up and gets their coat, and what happens? Suddenly everyone is getting their coats on, all at the same time. Which means that everyone had decided that the party was not for them, and no one had done anything about it, until finally this triggering event let the air out of the group, and everyone kind of felt okay about leaving.
This effect is so steady it’s sometimes called the paradox of groups. It’s obvious that there are no groups without members. But what’s less obvious is that there are no members without a group. Because what would you be a member of?
The question now is how long until there is no life left at the Facebook party but that virtually represented by a bunch killer zombies and blood-sucking vampires.
7 Comments »
Alan O'Rourke on 15 Jan 2008 at 2:56 pm #
Have to say i was never a fan of facebook in the first place and rarely used it.
Robin Blandford on 15 Jan 2008 at 3:24 pm #
I wouldn’t say I lost interest. I just don’t think I ever had it.
I enjoyed playing with FB as a developer, and will probably continue to do so if I have a relevant app. I also enjoy having my non-tech friends add photos as they haven’t been able to do it in one place elsewhere. But I never (v rarely ever) make wall posts, drawings, status updates, comments, or any sort of personal/messaging updates through it.
I do add people from work or who I meet - just so I can sometimes remember their account for later but really..
I use it as a Keyhole for spying.
;-)
John Handelaar on 16 Jan 2008 at 2:11 am #
Conversely, if you’re at a party and someone you weren’t really paying any attention to gets up and loudly announces that this is shit and he’s leaving, you’re quite likely to hear someone say “Christ, what a cock” when the door closes behind him.
To others considering this: Leave, or don’t leave. Fine. Just shut up about it, because nobody but you gives a stuff.
NiaLLLarkin on 16 Jan 2008 at 10:20 am #
@John Handelaar I couldn’t agree more. You certainly risk looking like a right cock to go about loudly announcing ‘this is shit’ before leaving a party :) Just to be fair to the guys mentioned though none of them announced that they were leaving (afaik at least). While on twitter I asked Pat Phelan if he’d gone very quiet on Facebook lately and he told me he’d actually quit. Robin Blandford overheard the original question and said he doesn’t use it so much. Then James and Alan and a few others started to add that they’d never really been big on it. It was just one of those things when an innocent question was asked and a here-to-fore silent consensus got aired. I assume it was silent up to that point because all of the above would agree that announcing their feelings loudly before leaving would have made them look like right pricks.
dc crowley on 16 Jan 2008 at 10:54 am #
My enthusiasm for facebook is a bit up and down at the moment. Two points though. It is new, it can’t be perfect and they seem to listen at least sometimes. I am not leaving Facebook. But there is one important reason why I am staying put. I want to social network in this way and there is nothing better yet. I am getting the hang of dealing with stupid apps. etc.
But as a network of contacts it works for me. I don’t get a lot of pointless friendship requests. What works for me does not have to work for you. But remember this stuff is in an infancy stage. Facebook are pushing to see what is possible. Some of it works and other stuff does not. Just my 2 cents.
NiaLLLarkin on 16 Jan 2008 at 10:42 pm #
@dc crowley I agree. Social communication in mediated spaces is at an early stage of its overall evolution. Facebook’s successes and problems have done a great deal to show us the way to the next stage of evolution.
Facebook has done nothing to advance the underlying architectural design blueprint handed down from sixdegrees thru friendster, tribe, linkedin, myspace, bebo etc.
However Twitter and the like have, albeit incrementally introduced to shades of advancement.
I do watch and hope facebook do something really exciting as they are the best positioned company in the world to advance this space right now. But have to say that our visit over there in December didn’t give me much reason to hold out hope. They appear to be very stronly focused on ‘rearranging the deckchairs’ rather than reappraising the fundamentals. Still you can never tell.
Kein Abschied für immer: Die Facebook Fessel | Werbeblogger - Weblog über Marketing, Werbung und PR » Blog Archiv » Kein Abschied für immer: Die Facebook Fessel on 22 Jan 2008 at 8:47 pm #
[...] Soeben wollte ich meinen Facebook-Account löschen. Nicht nur wegen des heftigen (und umstrittenen) Guardian-Artikels und der heranrollenden Austrittswelle, sondern eigentlich nur, weil ich dem Kaiser alles nachahmen muss. Er ist schließlich der Ranghöchste in der Monarchiekette. Doch jetzt mal ernsthaft. Mir ist es noch nicht einmal möglich, mein Profil, meine eingestellten Daten, meine Aktivitäten, die ich auf der Plattform getätigt habe, dauerhaft zu löschen. Nein, ich darf das lediglich “deaktivieren” (darf also jederzeit wieder kommen und alles ist wieder beim Alten), aber entfernen oder löschen ist nicht. Das alles bleibt schön in den Händen der Zeit- und Datenkrake Facebook, die natürlich auch mit toten Accounts noch Geld verdienen möchte. [...]