From Friendster to Facebook and beyond
Not too long ago, âAdd me on Friendster!" was the likely note to end a conversation on, whether between old friends or even newly acquainted people. In fact, the Philippines has over 13 million active Friendster users, more than any other country in the world. People used to spend unbelievable amounts of time building their profiles, adding (and rejecting) friend requests, and posting bulletins on Friendster. Some people even had more than one account, because they had too many friends. âItâs like fast food. You check out a profile, and everythingâs there. You know how old the person is, what they look like, their interests âassuming, of course, that theyâre telling the truth," says Leah, a former self-confessed Friendster addict. âI think the testimonials were the number one attraction," Leah adds. âSometimes, people would send me messages after they had made me a testimonial, asking for a testimonial in return." It was an unwritten rule. Iâll say nice things about you, and youâll say nice things about me. It was a mutual admiration society â for what no one really knows, but hey it was fun while it lasted. Friendsterâs decline Friendsterâs swan song began in the early part of this decade, when a change of programming language caused a mishap in its server. A lot of users also felt that its revamped interface was too confusing. âSometimes I would need to find a certain friend, but I couldnât because the name was something weird, full of xxxâs and characters," shares Keith, who has since abandoned his bandâs Friendster profile. These days, most people have made the exodus from Friendster to newer and hotter social networking sites, particularly Facebook: whereas Friendster currently has 68 million registered users worldwide, Facebook has a whopping 300 million.
Graphics by Mark Merueñas Facebook manages to keep its users engaged, with people collectively spending more than 8 billion minutes on the site each day worldwide. And while both Friendster and MySpace are vulnerable to spammers because of the ability to change how your page looks, Facebookâs Application Program Interface allows third-party developers to freely and securely create applications on the social network itself. Facebook: a no-nonsense attraction Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Facebook is its usersâ demographic. Whereas most of Friendsterâs users in the Philippines are between thirteen to twenty years old, Facebook users include those over fifty-five. Surprisingly enough, Facebookâs fastest growing demographic comes from age 35 years old and above. Part of the reason behind this may be Facebookâs neat, no-nonsense interface. After all, without the flashy graphics, no one feels too old to be on Facebook. Its clean layout and intuitive search function were big attractions to many people, especially when Friendster, like its trademarked relationship status, âgot complicated." People quickly realized that Friendster was getting stale, and it wasnât difficult to find where everyone had gone. Persuasive technology Dr. B.J. Fogg, director of the Persuasive Technology Laboratory at Stanford University and author of an upcoming book on the psychology of Facebook, says that at the heart of Facebook's achievements is âhow they tap into some fundamental drives and make it easy to satisfy those drives. Things like the need to be socially accepted and, on the flip side, to not be rejected." He notes that Facebook is a persuasive technology, an interactive system designed to change human behaviors. Users are persuaded to create an account, upload a photo, update their status, join a cause, among many other things, because of the way Facebook is structured (it prompts you by asking âWhat are you doing now?" or suggests that you support a cause which five of your friends support) and the way that friends communicate with you, both directly via a private message or indirectly via a wall post or status update. Facebook subtly convinces users to keep their accounts active. Users stay on Facebook because their friends stay on Facebook; otherwise there wouldnât be much reason to stay. Addictively engaging, like chismis The instant gratification that real-time status updates provide satisfies peopleâs desire for attention, and more. For example, Nino, who works for an advertising agency, has been posting a mini-series of witty one-liners based on his contactsâ status updates. âFacebook is great for microblogging. I donât have enough time for longer blog entries, and the status updates spread faster. Like chismis," Nino shares. Once you post a status update, it appears on all your contactâs pages. They donât have to look for you to see what youâre saying. This works to your advantage, because it makes self-promotion and advertising so much easier and addictively engaging.