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Facebook, Friends, and My Mom
Posted by Evan Gerber on November 14, 2008 at 03:47 PM PDT
As soon as Facebook enabled domains other than .edu to join up, a number of older users began to use the service. Naturally, as the audience expanded to include siblings and (gasp) parents, the original constituent audience was not always please about it. While conducting research on teenagers and social networking interaction, one kid said “if my mom starts using [facebook], it’s all over.” One client of mine (who happens to be an extremely hip, plugged in woman) laughed ironically when telling me about her kid’s emphatically unenthusiastic reaction when she friended him.
It makes sense, I suppose – if I was still engaging in the sorts of behaviors I enjoyed in college, I certainly wouldn’t want my mom to read about them in my status bar. Coolness is, on some level, defined by boundaries - the creation of a sense of “other,” and generally, parents are about as other as you can get on the social spectrum. So you can imagine my surprise when my mom declined my invite to join facebook, as I was thinking that she’d be so excited, and feel like she was one of the technohipsters.
Instead, she thought I was nuts. “What do I want that for?” She asked. “I use email to stay in touch with my friends, and don’t need any new ones.” Lamely, I tried to explain that it’s a passive mechanism for staying in touch, she didn’t have to use it all the time, and it would be a fun way to reach out to her children. “No thanks – I have better things to do with my time. None of my friends are using it anyhow” I was taken aback, and tried to prove that some of her friends were on the network, and it was worth checking out. Mom was not that easily swayed, however, and said that she’d do a random survey of her friends to see who was on it. Turns out there are a few who do, to keep in touch with old friends, or children, or networking. There were many more who didn’t, either through a sentiment that it was for the “younger generation,” or “none of their contemporaries do.”
I realize that this isn’t an especially scientific study, but it does corroborate the notion that social networks, even the huge ones like facebook, are niche, to some extent. Like any site, users need to perceive a value proposition to compel them to interact. The additional complication of a social network is that the value proposition needs to be engaging enough to draw in not only the end user, but all of their friends. My mom knows that she can pick up the phone when she wants to say hi (or obtain tech support when her #$!@*% printer isn’t working again), and doesn’t think that she’ll see enough friends to warrant the investment of time.
If there is one takeaway here, it’s that even though the web is becoming an increasingly social place, users won’t engage unless there are people to interact with. Facebook didn’t have the community for my mom, so she declined. Those managing the digital channel would to well to remember that just because it’s there does not mean that people will use it. Carefully consider the reasons a user might interact with the social tools, and be sure that the initial experience is compelling. A failure to carefully map out the expected evolution of a social platform engenders huge risk for the project. Think about how the site might first engage, and then involve users, and encourage them to interact. Someone has to be the first friend, and they have to bring along others with them.
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