cc  >> Hi, everybody, welcome to  Wednesday Night at the Lab.  My name is Bruce Johnson; I work  for Wisconsin Public Television.  Tonight's lecturer is Cabell  Gathman.  She's a Ph.D. student  in the sociology  department here at the  University of Wisconsin.  She went to Truman State in  Missouri for her undergrad, has  studied abroad in Japan and  tonight she'll be talking about  Facebook and how people portray  their identities on Facebook.  Help me welcome Cabell Gathman  please.  (applause)  >> Hi, can you hear me okay?  Great.  As Bruce said, I am a Ph.D.  student in the sociology  department so I will be talking  a little bit about some of the  sociological theory that I use  in my work, but since I mostly  studied Goffman who is one of  the most accessible theorists  anyway I think that should be  pretty easy to get through.  What I'm interested in  particularly is relating how  people are presenting themselves  on the internet now with how  they present themselves in  face-to-face interaction. 

 So Goffman is best known for  this book he published in 1959,  The Presentation of Self in  Everyday Life, in which he uses  a dramaturgical metaphor.  He talks a lot about  presentation of self as if  people were acting all the time,  basically.  He talks about people feeling as  if they're on stage.  He talks about people's  awareness of different audiences  so that it's natural, according  to Goffman, for people to take  into consideration who they're  playing to when they present  themselves.  And in addition to that, they  have to rely on other people to  support that performance.  Goffman talks about performance  teams which are kind of like  your supporting cast.  When you're out in public if  you're with people who know you,  you kind of depend on them not  to challenge the way that you're  presenting yourself to other  people who might not know you as  well.  When you're presenting yourself,  for instance, to your boss if  you're in a social situation and  you bring a significant other  you depend on the significant  other not to pull a Homer  Simpson and embarrass you in  front of that boss.  As you can tell this is not  perfect reliability.  Performance teams are inherently  problematic. 

 You can never be totally sure  that other people will not,  whether on purpose or  inadvertently, do something that  puts cracks in your chosen  self-presentation.  But in general, Goffman said,  people kind of expect the  significant others in their  lives to play along with their  self-presentation to know what  to do in different social  situations to support the  presentation that they're trying  to give.  This also kind of plays into  Mead, another early sociological  theorist who talked about how  people even develop a sense of  self in the first place.  And Mead said that in order to  have a sense of self you really  have to have an awareness of the  community that you're in first.  His argument was that people  become aware of themselves as a  part of the community and then  they start to think about what  that individual part really is.  Having a self basically doesn't  make any sense unless you can  imagine the generalized other.  You're thinking about how other  people will react to you when  you try to figure out who you  are.  So that was Mead's point and  it's something that Goffman also  used in his discussion of  self-presentation.  Now of course this is all about  early work on face-to-face  interaction and  self-presentation.  Early social scientific research  on the internet was about a very  different place than the  internet is now. 

 How many of you were on the  internet before 1995?  Okay, what about before 1990?  Okay.  And as you may remember there  weren't any pictures.  There was ASCII art, a dying  form I believe.  But there wasn't any web.  And it was a very different  place.  Also in terms of access.  Rather than the fairly  ubiquitous online access that  you see certainly in the middle  and upper classes in the United  States now, and there is the  issue of the digital divide  which is a little beyond the  scope of my research but is  something to consider that not  everyone has equal access to  computer technology.  But at the same time far fewer  people were actually using the  internet.  It was a very different place.  I got online in, I think 1992. 

 I used to play text games called  multi-user dungeons and spend a  lot of time on Usenet.  And of course those were places  where no one I knew from  face-to-face life was.  I was like the only kid at my  junior high who knew about the  internet at this point.  No one else had heard of email.  But I was in an environment  where people went to meet people  who they didn't know usually  based on common interests.  And Sherry Turkle, who wrote  Life on the Screen, did a lot of  case studies of undergraduate  students at MIT who were using  the text-only early '90s  internet in that way.  A lot of the early research on  the internet and on internet use  has focused on the internet  before the world wide web.  Constance Steinkuehler is  actually a faculty member here  at the University of Wisconsin  and she updated her status on  Facebook last year to say that  Turkle's age of the fragmented  self online is over, thanks to  the grid we're now indefatigably  pinned down like Jay Alfred  Prufrock.  And I really liked that status  update when she did that so I  saved it for the purpose of  future presentations.  Basically the point here is that  cyberspace is now intertwined  with face-to-face space. 

 You are using the internet  frequently to communicate with  people who you know from many  other contexts.  In the past it would have been  difficult for you to even find  that many people you knew  face-to-face online.  But the fact is that actually  people aren't that happy to meet  new people if they don't have  to.  So in many cases I think they  actually prefer to use the  internet to interact with people  they already know if they can,  and of course since everyone is  online in many social circles  now it's just easy to start  talking to people who you  already know from these  face-to-face contacts.  So on sites like Facebook your  online identity is also tied to  your legal identity.  I saw a piece on CNN a couple  years ago where it was one of  those sort of alarmist internet  pieces where they were saying  that 75% of people have a social  network profile that gives their  full name, their date of birth  or their social security number.  And and/or is an important  conjunction here.  There is no field on the  Facebook profile form for social  security number.  People do sometimes list their  birth days but I think that's  probably actually a very small  minority who are giving out  government ID information.  However, in general if you're  looking for someone you know  from face-to-face context it can  be quite easy to find them  online especially if they're  using social networking sites. 

 So then the question here that I  often address in presentations  and talks especially with other  academics because often people,  especially beyond the graduate  student level, have no idea what  is going on on Facebook, how  many of you have Facebook?  Okay.  So a couple of people but not a  lot.  So I'm going to talk a little  bit about this.  Basically, as I said, Facebook  was conceived as a network of  people who had met face-to-face.  Initially it was Harvard only.  Then it become Ivy league then  it became university only and  finally in 2006 it opened to the  public in general so that anyone  with an email address could  join.  And that was probably because  MySpace was open to the public,  another popular social  networking site, and Facebook  knew if they wanted to keep  growing their market share they  had to let in more people.  It has structured profiles so  that you do have, as I said,  fields in the profile.  There is not one for social  security number, but there is  one for your birth date and  there is one for your name and  there are some other for, for  instance, relationship status,  sex, sexual orientation,  location.  The site is network-based so  that when you join you pick a  network that you're in. 

 The University of Wisconsin  Madison is a network to which I  belong.  I also belong to the Madison,  Wisconsin, network.  I belong to the Truman State  University network since that  was my undergraduate  institution.  And I belong to the Palo Alto  Research Center work network  since I interned there a couple  of times and you can have  employment networks as well.  They do limit the total number  you can have but this allows you  to find people sometimes more  easily who you might have that  school or workplace connection  to already.  Facebook's official statistics  about who's using it, take this  with a grain of salt of course  because they want to look really  robust.  They claim to have 200 million  active users as of April 2009.  Of course we don't know what  their criteria for active might  be, but they also say that more  than two-thirds of users are now  outside of college.  Again, I don't know if they're  counting me or not since I'm a  graduate student but I'm also  sort of a staff person.  It is definitely the case that  since they opened up to the  public more and more people who  are not in university at all  have been joining Facebook, and  I'll talk a little bit more as I  go about why that's happening. 

 Particularly, you can see that  from February 2008, sorry from  November 2008 to February 2009  women over 50 were an incredibly  fast growing part of the  Facebook population.  And a lot of that has to do with  what their younger family  members are doing on Facebook.  There's a lot of sociological  research that shows that women  tend to be more connected, they  tend to engage in more  communication more frequently  with friends and family, and as  Facebook becomes a major medium  for doing that, older women are  joining Facebook in order to use  it to do so.  I also want to emphasize that  most people who use Facebook,  they may have a very large  friend network where they have a  lot of people on the site  defined as friends, but most  people are using it to interact  primarily with people to whom  they are emotionally close such  as family members and people to  whom they are geographically  proximate like classmates and  friends at university or  coworkers.  People with whom they are going  out and doing things in  face-to-face space as well as  interacting online.  I say this because as an  internet researcher I frequently  field questions about isn't  technology making us more  isolated, aren't people  retreating into their homes, and  I don't believe that's the case  at all.  And from talking to users about  what they do on Facebook it  seems pretty clear that it  supplements and sometimes  enhances other forms of  interaction but it doesn't  replace face-to-face interaction  and other forms of  communication.  So I'll go ahead and give you an  example.  This is my Facebook profile.  Now, of course, it's typically  with research you try to not  research yourself but for the  purposes of example I think that  my Facebook profile is a good  one to look at. 

 I do also have permission from  my friend Andrea, and you can  see here that I have explicit  consent from Andrea to show you  her profile since I asked her  earlier today and she said sure.  This is a wall post right here  that I made, and you can see  that my user picture shows up in  miniature so that you have an  immediate visual reference that  this is something I'm posting  here and then she responded to  me below that.  The profile has a profile  picture.  So this is a larger version of  that little thumbnail you saw.  This will show up whenever  Andrea posts a comment on  someone else's page, you'll see  this little icon of her and you  see it here.  This is her status update so  that earlier today you can see  she was talking about getting  news print for a potting  project.  She does a lot of sort of urban  homesteading so I think she's  planting a container garden at  her apartment but decided not to  go because it was raining.  Another example profile that I  frequently use is my younger  sister.  I like hers because she was a  the president of her sorority  and was extremely active at  Boston University so she has a  lot of pictures.  You'll notice here that if I  click on "view photos of Hannah"  there are 1,290 photos that have  been tagged with my sister's  name. 

 If you click on that, and I  believe this happened in  Ireland, you can see all these    different pictures that other  people have added and I will  also be talking about that a  little bit more.  This is the wall, so you're  seeing where a lot of other  people have posted things there.  If you go to someone's  information you get these  profile fields.  So you can see what networks  Andrea is in.  Her birthday is listed, her  relationship status and notice  this is also a link so I can  click on that and actually go to  her husband's profile and look  at his profile in turn.  I happen to be friends with both  of them on Facebook so I have  access.  You might not necessarily have  access if you weren't friends.  She has favorite quotations and  contact information which I will  scroll away from so that none of  you can write it down.  But contact information is  another thing that people  sometimes actually use Facebook  to communicate even cell phone  numbers with some privacy  protection.  Some people are more assiduous  about using those protections  than others. 

 I teach undergraduates and there  are always a few of them every  semester who have their home  address public to the entire UW  network so that if I wanted to I  could bike over to their house  and leave them some  supplementary reading.  I tell them this in an effort to  scare them into making that  private.  As I was saying, these things  could be visible to only friends  and I was showing you profiles  that were created by people I am  friends with on Facebook so I  have the access to see all the  parts.  Facebook does actually give  people a lot of control over  what they make public.  They have to make their own  decisions about that.  Some people don't seem to give  it a lot of thought but others  do.  The real issue though is that  even if you're making things  private so that only people in  your friends network can see it,  there are a lot of different  people on Facebook.  So you saw my sister is on  Facebook, a number of my fellow  graduate students in the  sociology department are on  Facebook.  My students are almost all on  Facebook.  Literally out of a hundred  students a semester there will  be less than five that don't  show up on a Facebook search. 

 And they could be hiding.  There are ways to make yourself  un-searchable.  If they friend me, and this does  sometimes happen that students  in my class will send me a  friend request, they know that I  research Facebook so it seems a  little disingenuous for me not  to accept the request.  What I actually do is I put them  in a special group called  current students which prevents  them from seeing some of my  photo albums and they also  cannot post on my wall.  So you saw I made a little  comment on my friend Andrea's  wall saying hey, can I show your  profile to some people at a talk  tonight.  That's a very informal form of  interaction, I don't necessarily  want my students to be able to  have that kind of interaction  with me on Facebook.  So I prevent them from doing so  by putting them in that group  before I accept any friend  requests from current students.  Sometimes, however, you still  have this problem of people  tearing down the presentation  you're trying to make to other  people.  Because, as you can see, people  in your friends network can  typically post pictures of you  and they can also post comments  directly onto to your profile.  So I'm going to be talking a  little bit more about that how  that can create a problem if you  have people from dramatically  different parts of your life all  in your Facebook friends  network. 

 The data that I'm working with,  basically I have about 75  interviews that I did with users  of Facebook, many of them  undergraduates but some of them  having graduated some time ago  so some of them are actually  either in graduate school or in  jobs in the workforce working.  And I used Skype which is a  program that you run on your  computer, you can call phones  using it.  It's actually been very nice  because when I record interviews  with people I'm wearing a USB  headset so my end of the  conversation is very crystal  clear.  Some of my interviews I have to  repeat everything the person  says because they're apparently  on a cell phone on a back road  somewhere and it's like cutting  out every third word.  But that was a nice way, I tried  to have them be at a computer  when I talk to them.  So when I talk to my  participants they're actually  looking at their profile so I  can look at it and they can look  at it at the same time.  I can ask them questions about  different pieces of that profile  and both of us have it there as  a reference.  So I think that's a particularly  nice way to do the interview.  In person you could get a lot of  interesting, very rich data  doing in-person interviews but  this has also allowed me to talk  to people at a wide variety of  schools which I think is also  good because of course local  cultures, different campuses  even, may have somewhat  different ideas about what  appropriate Facebook usage is.  This is a new medium so people  are still in the process of  developing norms for how you're  suppose to act there. 

 And so I'll talk a little bit  more about that as well.  >> What's the Pamela plug-in?  >> That lets you record.  It's 25 bucks and you can  download it for Skype and you  can record anything with it.  So the basic concepts of  interest that I've been focusing  on right now, I've been looking  at these wall posts, comments  and status updates which are  texts that people either put on  their own profile or other  people may post to your profile  which often become a form of  public interaction because  usually when someone posts on  your wall you're expected to  respond.  It's very much like a greeting  even.  If you pass me in the hallway  and you say hi and you go like  this, that's rude.  And similarly if someone posts  on your wall in Facebook and you  don't say anything in reply a  lot of people think of that as  also being rude.  Photo albums and profile photos  I find very interesting because  of the way that they show  relationships between people.  So that people will make their  relationships with others part  of their self-presentation.  So that some relationships are  so important that people are  actually displaying them as part  of their self in the profile. 

 And they also function to show  that users are living active,  dynamic lives.  That they're not frozen in time  in this profile actually because  the profile picture often  changes.  Users take that picture and use  it to show others how they have  a full exciting life and do lots  of things.  And I'll talk a little bit more  about that.  What it comes down to is a form  of collaborative  self-presentation which  ultimately almost all  self-presentation really is.  As I said before, you depend on  other people to sort of support  the way that you present  yourself.  On Facebook that becomes very  clear because there's this nice  textual artifact.  There's a picture actually  posted on the page that I can go  back and look at and talk about,  making it very nice data if  you're trying to write about it.  And then finally there's this  sense of being accountable to  your audience.  There's a big criticism of  online interaction that it's  very constructed. 

 It's so constructed, it's so  fake, people are just showing  you their best side.  That's not any different from  the way people show themselves  to you face-to-face.  There's a reason I'm not wearing  my Winnie the Pooh pajama pants.  You have to expect that people  are making an effort to  construct some kind of persona  in pretty much every  interaction.  In fact, Facebook users are very  sensitive to being accused of  fake-ness, and I'll talk about  how you can see that in the  interviews that I've conducted,  the things that people say about  it.  So wall posts and comments,  again these are things that are  visible to all your friends  unless you've made a filter that  keeps them from seeing your  wall.  And I mentioned these filters  there are ways of separating out  different groups of people but  they don't seem of be terribly  commonly used.  Most users have an idea that  they exist but haven't spent  much time trying to use them.  As you can see the most common  wall post that people always  bring up when I ask them about  their wall is happy birthday.  Because Facebook will tell you  if it is about to be someone's  birthday. 

 If this is the news feed, this  is the page that I see when I  scroll in, this is my other  sister, and if I scroll down a  little bit I see this list of  upcoming birthdays.  So Neal Grigsby's birthday was  today.  A couple of these people are  people I actually consider  fairly close friends so it's  nice to have a little reminder.  And if we click briefly on  Neal's profile since his  birthday was today, you can see  that people are wishing him  happy birthday like crazy on the  wall.  It's quite rare for people to do  that in a private message.  There's kind of desire to make  that sentiment public.  How many of you have ever gotten  flowers?  At work?  Or school?  >> Do you include virtual ones?  >> Virtual ones are interesting.  Facebook actually has a system  of gifts.  But that's sort of outside of  scope here.  I feel like, these posts on the  wall in a way function in the  same way as getting flowers at  work or school in that they show  not only that the person cares  but they show everybody around  you that someone cares enough to  wish you happy birthday. 

 As I said before typically a  happy birthday post is kind of a  gray area because people get so  many of them that you'll often  see a blanket thank you for  them.  Someone might actually change  their status so it says  something like Neal thanks  everyone for wishing him a happy  birthday.  But generally speaking, as one  of my interview participants  said on September 14th, it seems  to be common courtesy on  Facebook.  If someone posts a message on  your wall you post back on their  wall.  I should mention that the  interface has changed a little  bit.  So that if we go back to  Andrea's profile and look where  I posted a comment asking for  permission to use her as an  example, this is a wall post  that I made right here, you're  now able to make comments so she  just commented on my wall post  so it's very clear that this is  a response that she's making to  what I said.  You didn't used to be able to do  that.  In fact, this is a fairly recent  development so before this if I  had posted this on her wall, she  probably would have posted this  response back on my wall.  And you can see here if you  click on "see wall-to-wall" you  get a list of all of the things  that we have posted on each  other's wall including in  November her happy birthday  wishes to me.  So this is an interesting  function. 

 It was more useful when people  were posting back and forth on  walls a lot and other people  wanted to see the whole  conversation and not just one  side of it.  People comment on a lot of  things, not just wall posts but  also on links that people  sometimes post, on status  updates so that earlier today I  was complaining that it is July  and I wore my leather jacket  when I was walking here and  mentioned that at least I would  not be sweaty on TV and you can  see that my friend Jason wished  me luck on that status update.  So people often comment on  status updates because people  are updating a status with  something they consider  important enough to mention on  Facebook, whatever that might  mean, and so people feel like  they should give some response  to that.  Status updates often disseminate  news so that in fact people  often find out about things from  status updates.  When people are leaving town,  when people are coming back into  town, when people get engaged or  have children.  I've seen many births of  children announced as status  updates on Facebook.  This is a good way to get a  certain big piece of news out to  a large network without having  to tell people individually.  I've also seen someone  communicate the news of a death  of a child this way to the  network of friends that he had  on Facebook.  So that in that case you can  imagine it was a particularly  painful thing to have to tell a  lot of people and he chose to  use the Facebook status in order  to sort of get it done and not  have to have that interaction  multiple times.  So moving into photos, as I  mentioned, photo sharing is a  major thing on Facebook. 

 This is something that a lot of  people find appealing.  And I should notice that the  quality of the interface is  terrible.  The quality of the photos, it  compresses them so that you  would never want to get a print  of a photo that was stored on  Facebook, the file is much too  small.  If you want a nice good site you  should just use Flicker.  But Facebook claims to be, and I  believe this, they claim to be  now the largest photo sharing  website in the world.  And they say that 900 million  photos are uploaded to Facebook  every month by their users.  And the appealing thing here is  that you can tag pictures with  the names of the people who are  in them.  As I said, that then gets linked  to the person's profile.  So you can go to my sister's  profile and browse through the   1300 photos that have been  uploaded of her to Facebook, and  you can show people that you're  doing stuff with others and that  you consider them important  enough to put the photo on  Facebook and tag it with their  name.  People generally expect this if  you upload photos you will tag  them. 

 And it's very popular to upload  photos for particular events.  So for instance, last year I  went on a bicycle trip with my  dad part of the way around Lake  Michigan.  And so we have this photo album  that is a bunch of pictures from  the bicycle trip.  Travel, vacations are a very  common source of photo albums  from Facebook.  I also have an example of an  Easter egg dying party that I  had with some friends last year.  So you can see, here we are, we  don't really get to the eggs  until the second page.  There we go, see look at all  that.  And also if you notice down here  it even tells you in this album,  so you get a list of the people  who are tagged in the album.  And you can see how many photos  of each person there are.  These are all collected, all  these photos get linked to the  individual people's profiles. 

 And it's a way for people to see  what you're doing and with whom.  So again this is really  emphasizing that I have good  enough relationships with this  group of people that they're  willing to dye Easter eggs with  me and be photographed.  And they're also willing not to  un-tag themselves when I put the  picture up.  This is another issue is that  when I tag these people in these  photos, the photos get connected  to their profile.  So then anybody they know can go  to their profile and see those  pictures.  If they don't like the pictures,  that could create a problem.  If they feel that they don't  look good in the pictures or if  for some reason they do not want  to be seen dying Easter eggs, in  general the most common reason  for un-tagging pictures that  undergraduates told me was  either that they looked bad or  that they were doing something  illegal.  (laughter)  And this is a concern.  Photo tagging is emphasizing the  relationship that I have with  these people, and similarly then  if they un-tag the pictures that  says something about the  relationship too.  It's very common for people to  un-tag photos of themselves with  former romantic partners. 

 It's actually more common for  them to just remove their name  from those pictures than to  actually delete them.  Because many of the pictures may  have been posted by another  person so you don't have access  to delete that picture but you  can take your name off it.  And a lot of people seem to do  that after a breakup.  I also have a nice quotation  here this woman told me that  even if she doesn't like how she  looks in a picture she's  reluctant to un-tag it if a  friend uploaded it because she  feels like they put it up  because they have this  friendship and if she un-tags  it, that says something negative  about the friend or about the  relationship that they have.  It's something that they liked  so she should leave it tagged.  This is an interesting issue  when you're looking at photo  albums and deciding whether to  tag people as well.  So that one user I spoke to who  was in a sorority I asked her if  she ever untagged herself  because of something she was  doing.  She said no.  Members of her sorority are not  allowed to be photographed  drinking in their letters.  So they can't be wearing their  sorority letters and be  drinking. 

 And that had not happened.  She said, well if someone did  tag a picture like that then I  would un-tag it because it's  against the rules.  And then she said but I figure  people know not to do that.  So there's definitely an  expectation here that other  users will act right, that other  users know a basic idea of what  they should and shouldn't do and  can be counted upon in some way  to protect the self-presentation  you're trying to make.  Profile photos are interesting  because of course the person  chooses the profile photo him or  herself.  And it becomes, as I showed you,  a representation on the site of  that user.  You see a little thumbnail next  to all of the things they do on  Facebook.  In general, people like pictures  where they're with friends or  family, where they're with  significant others, again  emphasizing relationships.  And also where they're doing  something interesting.  So that people frequently told  me that they thought a good  profile picture was one that  showed someone doing something. 

 And you often see people take a  picture that someone else has  posted and set it to be their  profile picture.  Facebook makes it very easy to  do that.  If a picture is tagged of you,  you have the option to set it to  your profile picture and again  this becomes a way to emphasize  a relationship you have with  someone else.  If you choose a picture that  they took to represent yourself  on Facebook, that's saying  something about the relationship  that you like the pictures they  take, you approve of the way  they represented you on  Facebook.  So the important thing here  seems to be showing yourself as  active.  Not static.  Doing a lot of things.  As I said, going on trips,  engaged in particular  activities.  I frequently organize graduate  student karaokes with a lot of  the other social scientists and  every month after I put up  karaoke pictures two or three  people will change their profile  pictures to something from the  album.  So that they're using pictures  from kind of a group thing that  we do but also keeping things  current. 

 There is this exception of baby  pictures which is interesting.  Some people really don't like  it, I should note.  Because some people feel very  strongly that your profile  picture should be identifiable  as you instantly, and so they  don't like baby pictures but  some people use them a lot.  As you can see if I click on my  sister's profile picture I  actually get an album that  Facebook has automatically  created showing all the profile  pictures that she's had.  This is one of my favorites and  it is a baby picture.  Isn't she adorable.  But she mostly has pictures of  herself as a young adult.  These are mostly current  pictures.  This one shows her at graduation  with a fellow member of her  sorority and her boyfriend which  is a pretty typical way of  displaying relationships in a  profile picture.  And I don't know who took that  picture but I'm pretty sure it  was not her. 

 So she used that to emphasize  those relationships and also to  emphasize the event of  graduation, obviously.  Wedding pictures are another  kind of profile photo that  you'll frequently see showcasing  an important relationship and an  important event.  As I mentioned, what this leads  to is a necessarily  collaborative quality in the  self-presentation that you see  on Facebook.  All this stuff is visible to  other people.  Even the relationship status  field has to be approved by the  other person and then creates a  link to their profile.  And photo tags also linked to  profiles.  It's possible to un-tag  pictures, it's possible to  delete posts that other people  make on your profile, but you  can't erase it until it's  already been done.  And depending on how often  you're on Facebook a number of  people may have seen it before  you have a chance to do any  damage control.  So this can be a problem if  other people don't consider all  the possible audience members.  And this is the issue is that  it's difficult to manage when  you have different groups of  people. 

 Something that Dana Boyd, a  recent Ph. D. from, I think,  Berkeley, I'm not sure,  she calls this context  collision.  And so there are ways to deal  with this some people avoid  friend-ing others who they don't  want to have to manage their  content for.  So this particular participant's  brother refused to friend her  mother on Facebook, as she said  I don't think that he wants to  worry about portraying himself  in a way his mother would like.  Other people choose to get rid  of content.  So an undergraduate I talked  to untagged pictures of  herself drinking because she  didn't want her cousins, who are  also on Facebook, to see the  photo.  So these are a couple of  approaches people may use.  They either try to avoid having  those problematic contacts or  they try to control the content  very carefully.  As I said, using groups to  change what different people can  see is still fairly uncommon.  We'll see if it becomes more  popular over time.  It's so recent that I don't have  a lot of data about it. 

 The value here is that people  trust content added by other  people more than they trust  content added by the profile  owner.  If I choose a profile picture  that someone else took, we know  I didn't stage it to look really  great in that picture, probably.  I can't control exactly what  people post on my wall so that  if someone is looking at my  profile they may see those  things as what Goffman called  given off impressions.  Things in face-to-face  interaction like tone of voice  or subtle gestures that we might  interpret as being inadvertent  or unintentional.  These are things that we think  of as being less under the  control of the person presenting  him or herself and because we  see them as being less  controlled we also tend to  assume that they are more  reliable, that they are more  authentic representations of who  the person quote really unquote  is.  And you can see for instance a  student who I interviewed  decided not to pursue a guy she  met at a party because she  looked at his Facebook profile  and there were lots of girls  posting flirty comments on his  wall and she decided he looked  like a player.  Not because of anything he did  but because of what other people  were doing on his profile and  she considered that to be a  better clue than anything he  said at the party.  Users know that there's a  possibility that their  presentation will be subject to  accusations of fake-ness or  incompleteness or representing  themselves overly attractively.  There's actually a term for it,  Facebook fraud, which refers to  profiles pictures that look  unrealistically attractive.  And this is a term that a lot of  undergraduates use because, as I  said earlier, people are  interacting on Facebook quite a  bit with people who know them  very well. 

 Either they're emotionally close  like family members or they  might just be people who see  them quite frequently in person,  because of that they know that  those people might challenge  them if the presentation they  have on their Facebook profile  is too different from what those  people see in face-to-face  interaction.  So that a lot of people mention  profile photos should be  up-to-date what I actually look  like.  So there's this sense of needing  to represent yourself in a way  that is attractive but not too  attractive.  Because basically nobody on  Facebook wants to look like  they're trying too hard.  And they're sensitive to  accusations of that.  At the same time, there's a  reverse accountability that  people are sensitive to leaving  other people out.  So that it is difficult when  this interview participant's  brother refuses to friend their  mother that's a little bit of a  problem because their mother  knows he uses Facebook a lot,  refusing to grant her friend  request is a little hostile.  And in fact, denying a friend  request from someone is  considered to be kind of hostile  on Facebook.  Unless you just don't know them  at all most people will accept  friend requests because they  don't want to seem like they're  being rude.  There's also a saying, I don't  know how many of you have heard  this, it's not official until  it's on Facebook. 

 Which people often use to refer  to pictures and also  relationship statuses so that  very, for sure undergraduates  who I talk to will often mention  that a relationship is serious  once it has been officially  declared in the Facebook  relationship status profile  field.  And that's how you know that the  relationship is really  meaningful.  So where is this going?  It's a new medium.  And it is what Goffman might  have termed a new interaction  order.  It has particular risks.  Things like unflattering photos  being posted.  Comments going up on your wall  that you might not want everyone  to see.  I had a friend who also teaches  at another institution who  caught a student lying about the  death of a parent by looking on  her Facebook wall, which she  had done to get an extension.  So this, if nothing else, should  teach people the value of  privacy settings.  This is something that can  happen. 

 There's also this issue that  people are not entirely sure  what the rules of polite  Facebook society are.  As I said, most people think  that you should respond to a  wall post by posting on the  other person's wall.  But not everyone necessarily  shares that opinion.  Some people really like profile  photos that have other people in  them, but some people still feel  that a profile photo should be  just a head shot so it's easy  identification.  There's conflict here.  People are still working out  what the norms are for using  Facebook.  What the unspoken rules of  interaction are on Facebook.  And people may try to import  behavior so they might try to  use rules from a setting with  which they are already familiar  but people still have different  settings.  Some people are much more formal  on Facebook than others.  There are some people who have  Facebook accounts that are  almost entirely work related. 

 If they friend people who use  them much more socially you can  see how that might lead to some  conflicts in wall posts and  photos and things like that.  What I'm hoping to do in the  near future is talk to more  undergraduates and ask them to  specifically tell me some  inappropriate Facebook stories  because the best way to find out  what the rules are is find out  what people saw as being really  deviant.  So I'm going to ask them about  what happened on Facebook that  was obviously just outrageous  and see what they come up with.  There's already a sense,  definitely a lot of people  mentioned profile pictures, you  should be clothed.  Apparently there's a sense that  some people's profile pictures  are too risque and that has a  lot to do with people coming  from MySpace, in particular.  Which is again a little beyond  the scope here.  But you can see where some  people want to look kind of sexy  in profile pictures.  Other users feel very strongly  that that's inappropriate for a  profile picture so that can be a  source of conflict.  >> It will get deleted too, I  think.  >> Well, only if you're showing  nipple. 

 So I leave you with this comic  from phdcomics.com,  which came up about a year ago  with what your Facebook  profile says about you.  And you'll notice that it  definitely covers the exotic  location or extreme sport, as  well as baby pictures and  significant others.  Really the whole, the message of  Facebook profiles in general  could probably be see I'm not  the only person who likes me but  in particular photos with other  people.  So this is an example of how  Facebook is definitely part of  mainstream consciousness and is  becoming more and more so.  As I mentioned, older adults are  one of the faster growing using  groups on Facebook right now and  that's something that I hope to  talk to some people about since  most of my interviews have been  with people at the outside under  35 to see what is drawing them  to Facebook and how they might  be using it differently.  >> What's ROTFL?  >> Rolling on the floor  laughing, it's an acronym.  (laughter)  But yes so now I'd  like to open it up to questions  from anybody.  Yeah?  >> A comment I've made I won't  do business with Facebook  anymore because I've had some  problems with them, but there  has been a trend toward I think  becoming much more conservative,  and I've been deleted twice,  once I guess because somebody  complained that I was trying to  friend them who they felt I  didn't know well enough and a  second time because I was using  an assumed name.  But people have gotten away with  that for quite a long time, but  now it seems that they're just  cutting you off without any  warning for very trivial  reasons, I think.  >> It depends on the user. 

 And their policy, they've never  been totally consistent about  pretty much anything.  So that's been sort of an issue.  There's definitely sort of a  seat of the pants thing going on  with the way that Facebook has  developed.  A lot of stuff has happened very  quickly, a lot of interface  changes have happened without, I  feel, very much user testing.  So on their end it's hard to say  why they're doing particular  things.  I do think that in general  Facebook users, especially the  undergraduates and young adults,  are becoming much more sensitive  to the possibility that they may  have employers out there looking  at their Facebook profiles so  that people have become more  privacy conscious at the very  least.  In general people are being more  careful.  Yeah?  >> My generation already has a  sense of wanting to have more  privacy so that's one reason I  don't belong to Facebook or  MySpace.  But a big reason is, you pointed  out that as you post on walls  and you put up birthdays you  begin to have to respond to all  of these things.  Your birthday is there you're  going to get a lot of postings  on your birthday you're going to  have to respond to all of them. 

 How do you find the time to keep  up with things if you are on  more than one of these things?  >> You bring up a good point  about being on more than one.  In general users tend to stick  with one.  For the exact reason that you  gave which is that it is very  time consuming to use a network  like this.  It's a big investment to be  using it and posting on it and  putting content in.  So that if people start using a  new network that usually means  they're leaving the network  they were on.  And you do see that on Facebook  right now is that a lot of  people are coming from MySpace  on to Facebook and abandoning    MySpace because it's too much  work to manage more than one.  In terms of how people find the  time to do one, typically people  are multitasking.  A lot of people will have a  browser tab open with Facebook  in the background for large  periods in the day when they're  doing homework, when they're  doing some kind of desk job.  It's just yet another form in  that sense of kind of online  procrastination where they can  just pop in every now and then  to see what's going on.  >> There is a third network that  I do belong to and that's  LinkedIn. 

 It doesn't demand anything of  you because it's used as a  reference tool.  >> Right, it's a very different  system.  >> I work for a very large  private employer that has  recently decided Facebook is  where potential customers are  and they're encouraging  employees to get on Facebook so  I have.  And they're emphasizing fans,  become a fan of.  But it hasn't really been  explained.  Is it a commercial application?  >> So she's asking about  becoming a fan of something on  Facebook.  And you can have a fan page on  Facebook so that you basically  connect yourself to something  and say I'm a fan of this.  I think I can show you on my  info page.  And you do see this with stores  and celebrities and particular  products.  So I am a fan of Star Trek. 

 And so there's a page for Star  Trek and you can become a fan of  it.  And you can do this with, as I  said, businesses as well.  I'm a little, I'm wondering how  your employer is imagining how  they're going to leverage  Facebook.  And see the problem is a lot of  people try to use Facebook, they  get this sort of general idea  which goes something like there  are many people on Facebook, I  want their money.  And then it sort of ends there.  They sort of get on Facebook and  look around for the money.  And that's not really very  effective.  And in fact people will often  resist this kind of thing.  They get very annoyed about it.  There's something now on  Facebook there are third party  applications which other people  can design and connect on  Facebook. 

 Often these are games.  And it used to be with most of  them in order to use them they  forced you to invite 20 friends  to also use the application.  People hated that.  Because then you were getting  spammed all the time because one  of your friends wanted to play  online Scrabble and you were  getting all these spam  notifications on Facebook.  People really didn't like that,  and they've really cut down on  that so it's not happening as  much anymore.  But there's also sometimes  people in universities people in  teaching positions will  sometimes try to use Facebook to  engage the students in class  related discussion.  And the students think that's  extremely creepy.  They don't want to have that.  Most of the time I always have a  few students who friend me  during the semester but most of  the students don't want to have  that kind of relationship with  their teacher, their teaching  assistant, their professor,  whoever and they resent what  they see as an intrusion into  their social space.  I think this goes back to what  you were saying about LinkedIn. 

 LinkedIn is a business  networking site, that's the  purpose of LinkedIn.  But I think if you tried to use  Facebook just to leverage  contacts for jobs people might  be a little kind of why are you  inviting me to this.  And certainly once you start  using Facebook to try to  advertise something that's very  iffy.  I'm not saying it can't be done  but typically good internet  advertising that people actually  like you have to have some kind  of really funny video, some kind  of content that people like.  If you're trying to get them to  look at your product, you have  to give them something that  they like before you start  bothering them to do something  that they didn't want to do.  And that's an issue that a lot  of people kind of get on  Facebook trying to use it  without thinking about what kind  of space it is which is  primarily, for most people, a  social hangout.  It's like you're going into  somebody's corner coffee shop or  bar and trying to get them to  take a telephone survey or buy  your magazine subscription  basically.  Yeah?  >> How does a new user learn  what the rules are?  >> Basically the same way that  you learn what the rules are in  everyday life.  Which is to say that failure is  feedback.  It's to be perfectly honest I  think people realize that  certain kinds of behavior are  expected when they don't provide  the expected behavior and people  say hey what's going on. 

 In some cases particularly, like  my mother recently got Facebook  which is very surprising because  she's always a technological  hold out and she's 62 but it's  not just that she's older but  that she really resists using  technology, I think because the  rest of us like it.  She was refusing to get on  Facebook but she finally did.  And now she asks my father and  my sister who lives at home  questions about it.  But in general a new user  getting on Facebook has to  expect a little bit of an  adjustment period where you sort  of figure out how the interface  works.  Because that's part of it too,  how you do certain things.  But then also what people expect  from you in terms of responses  and what is okay to post  publicly and what is not okay to  post publicly.  And that maybe part of the  reason that some people are kind  of still a little leery of  getting on is that it might take  a while to learn that and you  would have these additional  social obligations.  Yeah?  >> One thing that I've always  been amazed by, perhaps not as  much with Facebook but with  other ones like Live Journal, is  how much people can write  everyday about themselves or  what they're doing and all that.  I wouldn't be able to do that.  After a few days it would just  be repeating the same thing over  and over again. 

 But some people it just amazes  me.  >> I think it's important to  recognize that it is, people are  constantly providing little  tidbits of content about  themselves on Facebook, but as  I've been saying it's all in the  interest of interaction.  People don't talk on Facebook to  hear themselves talk.  They talk on Facebook to get a  response to the things that they  say so that people, and one of  my participants actually I asked  him do you post on other  people's walls and he said yeah  if I have something witty to  say.  So very specifically he was  noting that he wanted to say  something that other people  would find witty and amusing.  And you see that when people  post comments and reply to  status updates or post comments  on photo albums, and that's  something I don't know if I  really emphasized that but when  people post photos they tend to  get a lot of comments.  And the site actually emphasizes  that too.  If you go to the news feed, the  log-in screen you have an option  for just click on a photo news  feed.  And if I do that I just see  photos of people that I know  have uploaded.  So it just gives me a list of  that to look at. 

 This is my cousin.  I have a lot of family members  on Facebook.  Something that many of my  interview participants find kind  of appalling.  Yeah?  >> Going along with the issue of  how much time you spend, if you  are too busy and you spend a few  days not going to Facebook do  you feel obligated to go back  and look up all the stuff you  missed?  >> Are you asking me personally?  Because that never happens.  I went on a bike trip and I used  my dad's iPhone to check  everyday.  In general, this is actually  interesting, what do you do if  you have been away from  Facebook, when you come back do  you spend time catching up?  To is a certain extent, yes,  users will go and look.  One that you can do is on that  news feed you can actually have  sub-groups.  I have one called the VIP which  is really the one I usually look  at.  So if I wanted to see what my  more important friends and  family had been doing, I could  get a list of just them.  People will sometimes just say  I've been out of the country,  I've been out of touch, did  anything happen?  So that then people will  actually put out the call on  Facebook like in a status update  saying let me know if I missed  anything important, asking  people to fill them in if they  think that something happened  that would interest them. 

 Most users though, and  particularly very active users,  are often using Facebook mobile  as well.  So that if you have most cell  phone networks in the US you can  get notifications from Facebook  sent to your cell phone.  And of course if you have a  smart phone like an iPhone or  something people will also use  those to keep up.  So it seems to be an affect that  the most active users, have the  most stuff to catch up on are  the people who are the least  likely to be out of touch with  Facebook for a length of time.  >> (inaudible)  >> Yeah. Yeah?  >> How often is Facebook used  for job applicants and potential  employers.  >> I don't have data myself on    this, but it seems to be  increasingly common for  employers, for companies to look  at Facebook and MySpace to look  up job applicants on these sites  to see.  And I also, several people who I  spoke to who were in the labor  force mentioned that they had  taken some stuff off of their  Facebook profiles when they were  looking for a job.  And not just, you think of like  crazy Amsterdam weekend photos  but it's also things like a  woman I spoke to who had just  gotten her library degree from  the University of Michigan and  had taken a job at a state  school in Missouri, she removed  all of the political content  from her profile because  southeast Missouri is very  socially conservative unlike Ann  Arbor or wherever it was she  was.  So she told me this stuff is not  important enough to me to cause  a lot of tension with people who  might be my coworkers on  Facebook who see it and get mad  and might be offended by it.  So she just removed political  affiliation and some groups,  like she was in a legalize  marijuana group which she  removed from her profile because  she thought that that might  cause tension with coworkers. 

 But of course even before people  apply for jobs a lot of  employers are now looking at  Facebook to see if there are any  deal-breaking things that are  publicly available.  And as someone who teaches  undergrads I would say that I  just really like to know that  students are smart enough to put    that stuff under a lock.  I don't really care what kind of  crazy photos they have, I just  think that they should know that  I shouldn't be able to see them.  So that kind of thing, you only  have so much ability to go in a  see but there are at least some  stories about really big  employers often have people who  are alumni of different  universities, big universities  so that if you have stuff that's  only visible to the Wisconsin  network but they have someone in  HR who is a UW alum, that person  can go in and look and see that  stuff.  So that's something that not  everyone considers.  I think I said before undergrads  are getting much more concerned  about removing inappropriate  content, locking stuff, but they  don't always think about how big  their networks really are.  They don't always think about  who might actually be included  in the UW network beyond the  other undergraduates.  >> I'm wondering what you might  add when you get a new job.  >> Actually that's an  interesting point.  What might people add to  profiles in an attempt for give  their best face. 

 What might they had to interests  and activities, things like  that.  >> Would you reference facebook  on your resume,  say, "I'm on facebook" ?  >> Not that I've heard from  anyone.  It would not be surprising in  some parts of the tech industry.  But nobody's mentioned that in  interviews.  Yeah?    >> A thing that concerns me is  that you post all this  extensively personal information  but then when they do something  nasty like they delete you or  put some nasty warning on your  screen, which has happened to  me, there's very little way of  accountability as far as  tracking people down.  Usually they just refer you to  FAQs or something when you have  questions or to a help desk  which is very slow to respond if  it responds at all.  And that's a concern I have.  >> Of course, this is a big  issue is what do you do if  Facebook is locking down your  profile or telling you you're  using it inappropriately and of  course the problem is this isn't  a government agency, it's a  private corporation.  They can have their own  policies.  If you actually look at the  terms of service that you're  agreeing to when you sign up for  an account there was actually a  big thing a few months ago  because they amended the terms  of service in such a way that  they were basically taking  ownership of everyone's photos. 

 And people were very upset about  that.  There was a big outcry about it  and they sort of backed down.  But they still have most of the  control when you're using the  site.  So there are people who don't  want to use social networking  sites because they don't like  the idea of giving up control of  their content or not being able  to control who has access if  something happens like the  account being locked down, that  kind of thing.  >> And I find it very  significant too that they  provide no phone number, no  address and no specific names of  people you can try to contact.  >> I'm sure they don't want to  pay anybody to do that job.  >> When you want to catch up  with friends...  >> Yes...  >> Is Facebook the way  you do it?  Do you ever use email and do you  ever make phone calls?  >> I make lots of phone calls.  And most people who I talk to,  most of my participants, the  question is if you want to catch  up with people, how do you do  it?  Is Facebook replacing phone  calls and email?  I would say certainly for a lot  of younger adults, undergrads,  early 20s, Facebook may be  largely replacing social email. 

 A lot of undergraduates who I  talk to say that email is  formal, it's what you use to  contact your professors, and  Facebook is what you use to  contact your friends.  Now Facebook does, as I said,  have private messaging.  So it is possible, it's  basically an internal email  system.  You can message someone on  Facebook and use that to have a  private conversation, but a lot  of undergrads do see that as  more informal than email.  They also text.  So they use cell phones to text.  I just got a new cell phone with  a pull-out keyboard so that now  I can text faster.  I like to text when I'm waiting  for the bus, that kind of thing.  But that's very common among  undergrads is a lot of texting.  But they also do make phone  calls and they do hang out in  person. 

 Several people who I talked to  basically said with Facebook I  talk to other people more.  I'll just talk to my sister or  my friends any little thing that  occurs to me I'll talk to them  on Facebook because it's really  easy and it's not like important  if you're doing it on Facebook.  But they will call people and  talk to them in person as much  as they did before.  This is more of a supplement.  And in fact there are some kinds  of interactions that people do  get kind of angry if it happens  on Facebook instead of  face-to-face.  I had several people complain  that they found out about  people's new relationships from  Facebook and they didn't think  that was appropriate.  They felt that the person was  close, like family members, good  friends and they're saying this  person is close enough to me  that they should have called me  and told me that they were  getting engaged.  I should not find out that my  cousin is engaged from Facebook,  I had one participant say.  So for the most part, people do  still have a very strong sense  that certain kinds of  interaction are more important  and should happen in a phone  call or face-to-face.  Yeah?  >> If you un-tag yourself from  the photo what will prevent you  from being retagged again?  >> For a long time nothing. 

 It used to be that if you  untagged yourself in the photo  the person could re-tag you.  This could go on for a really  long time.  But a few months ago the site  changed that so now if you  un-tag yourself in a photo you  cannot be tagged in that photo  again.  But there's no way, and this is  an important distinction,  there's no way for you to say  let me approve all tags.  You can imagine it would be nice  if before they put up this  picture of me I could say yes,  that's okay or no, that's not  okay.  But that's not possible.  All you can do is remove a tag  once it's been put up on the  site and then it cannot be done  again.  >> All very scary.  >> You know, the thing is that  Facebook, as I was saying  before, they're growing in sort  of a weird way.  And the site keeps changing and  they basically just kind of  do things and then see if  there's a lot of anger from the  user-base and if there is then  they take a step back. 

 But if there's no outcry then  they just kind of amble along.  It sometimes seems like there's  not a lot of thought going into  every single decision, but it is  really big and getting more and  more users.  Yeah?  >> You talk about it as if  there's actually a group out  there reading all this stuff or  approving it.  >> You mean the changes?  >> For instance, how do they  know you're angry?  >> Ah, she asks, how does  Facebook know you're angry.  This is a good question.  People create groups that say we  hate you Facebook, why did you  change the layout.  Seriously, people create large  protest groups on Facebook.  In fact, this news feed it  doesn't always work out, this  news feed that you see here  where I get kind of a list of  all of the stuff people I know  have been doing on Facebook,  when they first introduced this  a lot of people hated it.  They said it was too much  information.  They didn't want people getting  notifications about this stuff. 

 They did change it so that you  could opt out, like you could  say don't send notifications  about stuff.  But there were a lot of groups  that said get rid of the news  feed, it's for stalkers and  things like that.  If you look at, let's see, I'm  searching I hate new Facebook.  I hate the new Facebook.  43,446 members.  I hate the new Facebook layout,  a similar number of users.  So things like this or for  instance Beacon, this was a  thing they did in partnership  with Amazon and some other  stores where it was basically  sending out news feed  notifications.  It's been kind of a long time so  it looks like there aren't any  groups for it anymore.  But a lot of people were very  angry about this change to  Facebook that basically sent out  information about stuff they had  bought online.  Which seems ludicrous. 

 But Facebook had implemented  this and then there was a big  public outcry on the site and  they got rid of it, basically.  >> So is there a staff at  Facebook that reads this?  >> They are a company, they have  staff members, they do look at  what people are saying.  You can contact the people who  work at Facebook.  If you go to the Facebook  website there's also, it's at  the bottom.  >> So if someone is doing  something inappropriate,  how would...  >> There's a link, typically,  if you get a message or  something to report someone for  inappropriate use.  You get a link to if you go to  "about Facebook," this kind of  gives you, they have like their  press information, resources, so  here you can share feedback with  them.  There are ways to get in touch  with the company, but a lot of  the groups too are just people  sort of venting.  For all 45,000 people hate the  new Facebook layout but it's  still here.  So not all of these users  complaints lead to a change. 

 Yeah?  >> I'm noticing something  recently, a bit off topic, but  with the internet you initially  think this is going to make  companies more visible because  they're going to have -- go  there and get all the  information.  But in fact, many companies are  hiding behind the internet.  You go to their sites and no  longer do you find a phone  number or an address.  You don't even know what country  they're in.  You might get an email address  for sales or something like  this.  There are companies now that you  can't get to because of the  internet they say it's all out  there you never need to contact  me.  >> Including Facebook itself.  >> This bothers me immensely  because now you can't find a  phone number to call up and talk  to somebody who can help you  with a problem.  >> Yeah, and this is an issue.  I have to say that I hate  talking to customer service reps  on the phone because I always  end up on hold and I don't have  a land line which means if I'm  on hold with customer service  they're wasting my cell phone  minutes. 

 But this is an issue that a lot  of companies don't have  face-to-face contact  information.  Basically, that you don't get  any kind of phone contact.  >> They're making a wall between  their customers rather than a  vehicle.  >> The question is how long can  this last.  And I would say that as I was  saying before, so much about the  internet has changed.  So much about the way the  internet works, initially it was  this place of sort almost  entirely pseudonymity where  people were using handles rather  than their legal names and  meeting people who they did not  know face-to-face often using  different nicknames in different  environments.  Now there's much more of  individual people tying their  internet use back to their legal  identity, as on Facebook.  What's going to happen with  companies it's hard to say.  In general I would say that the  legal system is playing catch-up  with technological developments.  How many of you heard about the  MySpace suicide in Missouri a  couple of years ago, the girl  who was bullied?  I'm still not entirely clear as  to why that can't be prosecuted  with existing laws governing  things like verbal assault, and  the reaction to that tends to be  that there should be specific  cyber bullying laws. 

 I think that in a lot of cases  what needs to happen with  regulation of stuff on the  internet is a lot of it actually  is that there's just no case law  to apply the laws that exist to  what's happening in a new  medium.  And I think that there is, it is  a new technology.  It does allow for some things  that are different from what you  can do in face-to-face  interaction.  But I think that it's a mistake  to see the internet as totally  different from face-to-face  interaction too.  Because there's so much going on  here that's actually quite  similar to what people do in  face-to-face interaction, it's  just changed a little bit by the  medium.  So I encourage people to try to  see the correlations between  face-to-face interaction and  what they do online, as well as  some of the differences that  technology enables.  Yeah?  >> One of my daughters will show  me my other daughter's Facebook  page.  And I asked my other daughter  I'm going to join Facebook, in  the past, a couple years ago.  She said that's creepy, older  people don't do that.  I'm assuming that that's because  initially you had to be in  certain networks that were  typically dominated by young  people. 

 >> Yeah.  >> But by your personal example  I'm assuming that's not such the  case anymore?  >> So the question here is it  used to be that younger people  dominated Facebook and tended to  see older people getting on  Facebook as creepy and has that  changed.  It has changed but the  perceptions of some of the  younger users have not yet  changed.  So the thing is, as I said  before, the fastest growing new  user group on Facebook are  primarily older adults.  The site now has more users who  aren't undergraduate students  than users who are.  And the other thing to consider  it began in 2003 at Harvard,  since then a lot of the  undergraduate users who joined  in the beginning have graduated  and now it doesn't seem so  creepy to them, since they're no  longer undergraduates, for them  to still be on Facebook.  I did have several people of my  participants I would say about  half of them did have parents on  Facebook and about half of them  did not.  And a lot of the ones who didn't  have them on Facebook were like  that would be so creepy, that  would be really weird.  I think that this is largely an  effect of the temporary role of  being a college student.  Being an undergrad student is a  very limited space. 

 You're kind of developing a new  identity.  People in their undergraduate  years are sort of putting some  distance between themselves and  their families that they grew up  in.  So I think they're particularly  disposed to want to maintain  social distance in a lot of  ways from their parents  especially.  And that's just an effect of  their sort of personal identity  development at that point in  their lives.  Certainly the woman who I talked  to, her brother who didn't want  to be friends with her mother,  he was younger, he had just  graduated college.  She on the other hand had a  couple of years of graduate  school and was now working.  So I think a lot of people it's  an issue of once they get a  little bit older they'll see it  differently.  In general I'd say that, and  this is something that as an  instructor I never friend a  student but if a student sends  me a friend request then I'm  willing to accept it.  And in general I think that's a  good rule of thumb if you're  older and have more power is to  wait to see if the other person  wants to initiate a social  relationship in the space of  Facebook with you.  So you said that your other  daughter was showing you her  sister's Facebook page?  >> We talked about some thing  that we are all aware of and she  said here's some photos or did  you know this. 

 That information was on Facebook  and it was a lot easier to see  in that medium than to try and  do it by any other way.  >> So Facebook was the easiest  way to see that stuff.  Did she know that her sister was  showing you her Facebook page?  >> I don't know if we've had an  extended conversation about  that.  We mentioned it a couple times  and they're both getting old  enough now that they're a little  more comfortable with it.  >> Okay, because that's kind of  an issue is that one sibling  maybe much more comfortable then  you have this sort of  intermediary position where  you're like giving information  to people.  This is actually why my mother  finally got on Facebook was that  it wasn't that any of us didn't  want her to see things that were  on Facebook but she felt like my  dad always knew things that she  didn't know, and it was because  he's on Facebook and my sister,  I have two younger sisters and  we're all on Facebook and  posting things and my dad would  just see that stuff there.  And so my mother finally joined  Facebook because my youngest  sister especially, I call home  pretty regularly and my middle  sister lives with them, my  youngest sister she'll be dead  air for weeks at a time so that  my mother joined in order to see  what was going on with her.  And with 1300 pictures on her  Facebook page that's a lot of  content for mom to absorb.  And I was just listening to an  interview that I had done a  couple of days ago where one of  my participants was telling me  his aunt got on Facebook because  his cousin, her daughter, never  calls and she worries.  And so she got on Facebook  because basically he said if she  updates her status then at least  we know she's alive. 

 So it's just a way for her to  check in too.  Yeah?  >> I'm surprised you haven't  discussed the poke function yet.  >> The poke function I feel is  on the way out.  It's an early thing on Facebook,  kind of a hey.  It wasn't even a post.  But I think fewer people are  using that now.  >> I could never understand what  it's supposed to be used for.  >> Yeah?  >> Well, I wonder if you think  that, earlier you said that it's  important to reflect that you're  always changing as a person.  And I know that before Facebook  people hadn't seen each other  for a while or maybe children go  home and parents recognize  change in their children.  Or the phenomenon at reunions,  so and so has really changed. 

 I don't know, a number of  questions, but do you think that  people are emotionally close do  they recognize changes on  Facebook on the phone and say  what's going on I think, is  something going on in your life  with these changes.  Is that common?  >> So is it common for people  who are close to others, if they  see things on Facebook is it  common for them to initiate  contact in other media.  And I would say definitely.  Often this comes in the form of  seeing some news on the site and  people will get in touch to ask  about what happened.  Often people will make us, in  general there seems to be a kind  of predisposition to represent  happy things on Facebook.  And is self-presentation and  people like to be seen in  general as doing okay.  But often you'll see a status  update that's like having a bad  day, is really sick of this.  Sort of vague unhappiness.  And very frequently other people  will get in touch with someone  to ask if they're okay.  What's going on with them. 

 Is everything going all right.  So that it can be a way to sort  of reach out for a little bit of  support from people.  But certainly, as I was saying  before, people who have close  relationships tend to keep  talking on the phone and seeing  each other on a regular basis  anyway.  So they might notice something  on Facebook, they'll definitely  ask about it in another context.  I do also want to mention since  you brought up reunions that I  definitely feel like Facebook  may kill the 10 year reunion.  Because it's just a short enough  period that you don't expect a  lot of sweeping changes and you  can just go and look at all the  people from your class from 10  years ago on Facebook.  And I like to say that you get  -- and pajamas that way as  opposed to having to go to the  reunion and travel and dress up.  But people do also mention, for  instance, losing weight because  they want to look better in  their Facebook pictures.  Because they want other people  to see them as not having  changed in what they consider to  be a negative way.  So that even this, there's this  awareness that other people will  notice things about you on your  profile and will notice if you  have gained weight, or will  notice if you are not posting  pictures of your significant  other anymore. 

 So people are very sensitive to  that too.  They think about making changes  even in their physical life in  order to have a better virtual  representation.  Yeah?  >> One last question.  >> One last?  >> Has Facebook in the past and  do you think in the future will  have any place or part to play  in political issues?  Like the elections and this  healthcare stuff?  >> So will Facebook have a part  to play in political issues.  It already has.  Certainly the Obama campaign  leveraged Facebook to get people  together.  A lot of their grassroots  organizing, just local  neighborhood organizing, they  used Facebook to do it because  it was the most reliable way to  reach a lot of young people.  I know a number of people told  me that they use a Facebook  group.  Librarians who supervise student  workers use a Facebook group  because it's the only way they  can be sure to get in touch with  their student workers.  They don't necessarily answer  email but they are on Facebook. 

 So if you're trying to mobilize  younger people, whether it's to  come to their work shift in a  library or to go out and  campaign for Obama, Facebook  turned out to be the best  platform to use for that, and it  does allow you to make groups  and message groups.  And in fact, my boyfriend wants  to know how the talk is going.  It's great thanks.  There's also chat built into the  Facebook which I, in retrospect,  probably should have turned off  before I started.  So this is a group that I  created in order to recruit  participants for my research and  I actually had like 150 people  within 36 hours of starting this  group.  The thing is it's a network.  I invite people, I ask them to  invite people, they ask their  friends to invite people and I  get a nice snowball sample,  basically.  And this works for political  organizing as well as helpless  graduate students trying to get  a good pool of research  participants.  So there's definitely political  organizing going on on Facebook  already.  What may happen is that another  site comes up in the future. 

 And I want to emphasize, how  many of you remember Friendster?  It was a social networking site.  Nobody uses it anymore except  30-something gay men in New  York.  That's pretty much it.  And then MySpace basically came  and conquered Friendster and now  Facebook seems to be in the  process of getting a lot of  MySpace users to turn over to  them.  There may be some new site that  shows up that has a killer app  that gets everybody to change  networks.  It will be have be really good  because, as I was saying before,  it's a lot of investment to use  one of these sites.  You have all this stuff you've  posted, you have all this  content, if you're going to  change to another site, it has  to be really good and all your  friends have to go too because  if your friends don't go then  it's just you, it's not a social  network.  But if another site in the  future can be a big enough draw  to get people to move then  Facebook may no longer be the  place to do your organization.  It may become a different  website is a better place to do  that.  Well, thank you. 

 (applause)