It’s hard to make close friends on Facebook, study says

From CBC News Last Updated: Monday, September 10, 2007 | 1:36 PM ET>>read more.  read two related posts: post 1 and post 2.          Social networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace aren’t expanding people’s circles of close friends, but they are creating plenty of meaningless relationships, according to British researchers.           A study of the sites revealed that while many users have hundreds or even thousands of acquaintances on their accounts, their core group of close friends is still unchanged at around five people. However, weak ties among people around the globe are rising exponentially, said Will Reader, an evolutionary psychologist at Sheffield Hallam University, at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.           The online study used a questionnaire and, based on the first 200 responses, found that close friendships were formed through in-person meetings in an overwhelming 90 per cent of cases.     “Face-to-face contact is a requirement for intimate friendships,” he told the conference. “There are many emotional cues that people give face to face, such as smiling and laughing, which are impossible to fake, whereas online it is easy to say, ‘You are wonderful, I love you.’ ”          A previous study done at the University of Liverpool found that most people have an average of 150 acquaintances in their social network yet also maintain a small core group of friends, which may indicate limitations on the human brain.          Reader said there are “good evolutionary reasons” why core friendship groups are so small. Making friendships means investing time and even money in another person, in which case face-to-face contact is invaluable so that people can see whether their investment is worthwhile. On the internet, it is “very easy to be deceptive” he said.          Social networking sites are, however, giving rise to a group of people known as friend collectors, who add little-known acquaintances just for the sake of having a large number of contacts on their profile. This allows people to “collect friends like boys collect Airfix models.”

Don’t get caught up in Third-screen thinking

Mobilenet Promises to Be the Next Big Medium     But Don’t Get Sidetracked Into Third-Screen Thinking     From AdAge Published: May 06, 2008 by Al Ries>>read more.     We are on the verge of witnessing the birth of a new mass-communications medium. It’s the second new mass medium to appear in the last two decades.     The internet arrived in the 1990s, joining the other four mass media: 1) The book 2) The periodical 3) Radio 4) TV. Each new mass medium has created enormous upheavals in society.     The book ignited the knowledge explosion.      The periodical furthered the growth of democracy.     Radio created a celebrity-oriented society.     TV homogenized the culture.      The internet, the latest and newest mass medium, continues to make waves. “We are not witnessing the beginning of the end of old media,” Advertising Age’s Bob Garfield wrote recently. “We are witnessing the middle of the end of old media.”     “Both print and broadcast — burdened with unwieldy, archaic and crushingly expensive means of distribution — are experiencing the disintegration of the audience critical mass they require to operate profitably,” Mr. Garfield continued. “Moreover, they are losing that audience to the infinitely fragmented digital media, which have near-zero distribution costs and are overwhelmingly free to the user.”     Fasten your seat belts. On the horizon, there’s another profound shift in media, consumer behavior and technology coming. In the near future we are likely to welcome the arrival of a sixth mass-communications medium.     And what is this earth-shaking new medium? It’s the Mobilenet.     The what? Surely you are joking, Al. The Mobilenet is just a subset of the internet. Just another way of going online. Just another way of surfing the net without using a computer. That’s why mobile devices are commonly called the “third screen.”      Third-screen thinking is going to cause you and your company to miss the boat. Which big brands were created by moving content from one medium to another? Very, very few.      Moving The Wall Street Journal online didn’t save Dow Jones from the clutches of Rupert Murdoch for just $5 billion.      Moving ESPN onto cellphones didn’t take it to the big leagues.     So far, moving TV shows to the internet hasn’t created as much value as one internet site, YouTube.com. Less than 20 months after its launch, YouTube was bought by Google for $1.65 billion.

Blockbuster sued over Facebook ad feature

From Chicago Tribue By AMANDA FEHD Associated Press Writer 11:51 PM CDT, April 17, 2008 click to read more.
SAN JOSE – A Texas woman has sued Blockbuster Inc. alleging the video rental company transmitted her personal information to Facebook.com through the Web site’s Beacon marketing program.     Cathryn Elaine Harris, of Dallas County, Texas, claims that Beacon, which Facebook launched in November, got the information from Blockbuster through computer tracking programs without her permission.

Facebook users translate new versions for free

Posted on Chicago Tribune From the Los Angeles Times By Tomoko A. Hosaka The Associated Press 1:31 PM CDT, April 18, 2008 click to read more.
TOKYO — The three-year-old social networking phenomenon Facebook, worth more than $15 billion by many estimates, got a good deal on going global.     Its users around the world are translating Facebook’s visible framework into nearly two dozen languages — for free — aiding the company’s aggressive expansion to better serve the 60% of its 69 million users who live outside the United States.     The company says it’s using the wisdom of crowds to produce versions of site guidelines — especially terms specific to Facebook — that are in tune with local cultures.     “We thought it’d be cool,” said Javier Olivan, international manager at Facebook, based in Palo Alto, Calif. “Our goal would be to hopefully have one day everybody on the planet on Facebook.”