Project-Related Frequently Asked Question's

Have questions about the project? See if you can find some answers below. If you have questions about Facebook, see this page instead.

Questions

What is Facebook?

The Facebook website identifies itself as "a social utility that connects you with the people around you."

Seem like an insufficient explanation? I agree. There's a lot of contention as to what exactly Facebook is and what it should be. For those unfamiliar with the system, understanding how it works and why it works is crucial to comprehending its importance in every-day student (and more) life.

Being the believer in heterogeneous engineering that I am, I've opened up a wiki page so we as a collaborative internet scholar community can ask the right questions and give the right definition to Facebook.

Just What is Facebook?

The Wiki also contains a list of the current features of Facebook as well as a bit of a history on old ones. The difference between this wiki and the Facebook What's New section is that we'll have considerably more earnest descriptions of the features as well as some of their common uses.

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What do you mean by 'collaborative project'?

Simple - this website is a nexus linking several people. Everyone has a say in its design and setup and they all pitch in to work on select projects together. The end result is a more even spread of work, better networking, and more diverse (and effective) results. There's no formalized organization or membership requirements, it's really just a work on it as you like and as you find time format. Don't be afraid to get involved.

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Why are you studying / making guides for / talking about Facebook?

Facebook is a a powerful and extensive example of a new wave of technology and society and exemplifies many important aspects of the internet-era. Social networking services (SNS) have, are, and will continue to change the way people think, behave, and interact and the normalization of such occurrences merits further specialized study. To the college student, and increasingly the high school and older generations, Facebook is a fundamental aspect of life - not ultimately defining, but among an array of communication, information, and identity constructing technologies like email, cell phones, and instant messengers that have become part of the norms of life. Unearthing the web in and behind Facebook sheds light on many aspects of both individuals and society. Learning to do so ought to be an open process.

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Is it really a big deal?

As told in Jeff's Masters paper:

One needs only to talk to any given undergraduate student to unearth tangible, substantive cultural impacts of Facebook.  Everyone has a story, or in all likelihood a whole manifold of experiences, narratives, and interpretations of the system.  In some ways it’s like a social local newspaper—only you can play with it.  If language is a signifier of pertinence, then just as ‘to Google’ and ‘to Photoshop’ have become verbs in the vernacular, ‘to Friend’ and ‘to Facebook’ have risen to this status on account of Facebook.1  Students have assembled extensive investments in the system and many have developed dependencies in varying forms—communications and news, extension of personality, community awareness and involvement, and initiation and continuance of both personal relationships as well as group membership.  Indeed, many students are learning to visit Facebook as much as email and update their Facebook status like they do instant messenger away messages.  As mentioned earlier, these high usage patterns are a logical consequence of the bridge between offline and online connections (Ellison et al. 2006) and the relationship between the once mostly separated worlds has become strongly coproducing.

The potential avenues for influence are numerous, especially among youth in the US.  Outside of science and technology studies, many subsets of sociology have traditionally considered internet technology as peripheral or incongruous.  However, education and research have a great deal to learn from the incarnations, uses, interpretations and social movements of new media.  As sociology concerns itself with informing people of the social shifts of the future we ought to pay attention to the influences Facebook will accrue, especially as it becomes nominally interlaced into the work place and expands its influences across the globe.  Facebook echoes, extends, and may even transform the interactions of the face-to-face world including the impacts of the many social groups (analytic categories) traditionally of concern to sociology: gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, ability and mental illness, class and geography, age and education, and countless others.  The ramifications of this claim insinuate that examination of Facebook ought to intersect with all subsets and variations of sociology be they areas like transnational studies and demographics or methodologies such as historical comparatives, content analysis, quantitative data collection, or ethnographies.  Studying social networking services and Facebook are imperative to modern Sociological study.

[1] The terminology of course varies by social networking service.  Users might “MySpace” one another or “Friend” one another there too.  Other SNS are more formalized, like “adding contacts” on LinkedIn.

Is it a fad? None of us can really speak with absolute authority on this topic, but Social-Networking Services themselves are here to stay. They may just be a convergence of many older forms of web media, but the participation rates and intensive usage resembles that of email or many instant messaging services. Fred Stutzman put it pretty well on his blog:

The Facebook isn't going away. While Facebook.com may not last forever, a service like the Facebook will always be present and useful on a college campus. The logic to this is quite simple: students are forced to renegotiate their social networks every semester. The Facebook supports and answers the student's information needs. Put simply, our students are curious; they want to know anything and everything about the students around them. If you had the Facebook when you were an undergrad, wouldn't you have wanted the same?

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MySpace? Friendster? Linkedin? Comparison?

There are many important Social Networking Services (SNS) on the web. This website is not out to promote Facebook over others, it just focuses on it. There's already a rich world worth discovering in Facebook, the scope of this site delves into this material for the sake of depth over breadth.

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Do you have a Facebook Group?

We do. There is a global group for discussion and coordination. Go join.

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Is this marketing or commercial research?

Not in the least. Our research agenda isn't oriented towards finding ways to get money out of Facebook or its users. Our research findings might inform marketers, policy makers, and educators, but is not designed specifically for these purposes. At this time the group is not interested in contracting for any corporate body.

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How can I get involved?

We have a whole section answering this question. Go look!

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What about the X feature on Facebook?

You might find some answers on the Facebook Features page. Alternatively, you can look through the research section to find some answers. Lastly, you can contact Jeff with questions.

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