Case Study of Facebook - Why Do People Use Facebook and What Do They When They Are There?

[1]Why do people use Facebook and what do they when they are there?

The development of technology has change almost all aspects of people’s lives. In the past, it is hard for us to communication if people are far away from each other. However, the appearance of multi-media facilitates our lives, especially the emergence of Facebook. There are several reasons why people use Facebook and these are also what people can do in Facebook.

-Share information with friends.

-Know about what their friends do (videos, pictures, stories)

-To relieve boredom

-To send individual messages to friends

-To post pictures, videos online

-To express social/political/economical views

-Easy to organize events

-Offer a simple way of spreading opinions.

-AND SO ON

There are lots of comments on Facebook, including those from Matt Black, Arl, and Aedwin. Comment Of The Week goes to Linda, who won with this comment:

“I continue to use Facebook for a couple of reasons, the main one being that I am home bound and Facebook allows me a place to interact with friends and family in a single arena. It allows me to interact and “participate” in their lives even though i am physically unable to be with them, wherever they may be.

Also, because I am a shut-in, I play a lot of “social” games, games that depend on friends and “neighbors” to complete goals. Facebook, is the only place that offers some of these games (Farmville, for example) and, having met and becoming friends with some of my co-gamers nearly five years ago, they have become very important to me. Our friendships have developed far beyond the constraints of the gaming world and they have become very real friends – friends that, often times, will notice my absence way before family or so called “real life” friends.”

First, let us have a closer look at Facebook.

NEWS FEED

In 2006, Facebook introduced a brand new field named news feed where the recent activities of users’ friends were displayed. And people could use this platform to dig out friends’ daily information and what was happening the society. Therefore, numerous news in the news feed makes Facebook one of the most biggest news consumption platform in the world. The system is excellent and match with everyone’s interest.

TIMELINE

In 2011, Facebook Timeline is published. Timeline combines a user's Facebook Wall and Profile into one page, creating a profile. Status updates, photos, friendships as well as job history will be displayed in the TIMELINE. It is a kind of memory of you.

Users are encouraged to post accomplishments to their profile and document life events, including when they joined Facebook and what they did. And people are able to tell a brand story with milestones.

PRIVACY CONCERN

Facebook takes some measures to protect citizens’ privacy. There are two icons devised for protecting. One is used for hide or delete the object, and the other group button which allows you to choose who can see this information. You can adjust it.

These are just parts of the motivations of starting to use Facebook. Actually, Facebook satisfies twos basic needs: the need to explore new things and the need to present themselves.

People are all conscious about life’s shortness and they will make full use of social-media to explore new things, to travel in the Internet. They are carious about everything they are not familiar with. And Facebook is exactly the right platform for them. Facebook expands their social network and helps them to make new friends, meet fresh news. Pretty amazing, right?

What’s more, Facebook are able to present people’s daily life. We just need to click the button and then our photos or videos will be updated. It’s convenience attracts a lot of people.

And there is a question, why people choose Facebook rather than other social media?

As far as I am concerned, the underlying factor is the motivation of devising Facebook. At first, Facebook was invented by Zuckerberg. However, it differed from other social media in that it initially restricted membership to those who were students. This meant that people could have more privacy space on the Internet and did not need to worry about strangers’ interruption. So Facebook was popular at that time. Gradually, a increasing number of people began to use Facebook.