Why Facebook?
salience and impact
The Facebook Project
The Sociology of SNS
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about us
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our research
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our publications
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get involved
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contact us
The Facebook Wiki
We need your help filling in and flushing out the Facebook Wiki. We want to make sure a variety experiences and observations of Facebook are represented.
Quick Facts
Ever wonder about the little things on Facebook? Find an answer below or see the quickfacts page for more examples.
- Question
- Answer
About how many friends does the average Facebook user have?
- <100
- 100
- 150
- 200
- 250
- >300
Trick Question. Depends a lot on your network. The last large scale study (Golder, Wilkinson, and Huberman 2005) calculated average mean per-user friend count for Facebook users in general to be about 144, with a median of roughly 180. It's not really possible to count anymore, however. The UIUC data Jeff Ginger collected in 2006/2007 indicated something around 150-200 UIllinois friends, on average.
Connect the Intellect
We're looking to unite and collect internet scholars and Facebook researchers. Help add to the project! This also goes for those seeking help, too.
cyborging of the mind
extending personality
Fall Semester 2008: On Pause
10.08.2008 @ 3:29 AM by Jeff Ginger
Jeff has just recently begun a new PhD program in Community Informatics and unfortunately hasn't been able to afford a lot of time to continue Facebook research. He did find a way to fit a paper on Facebook into his distributed knowledge class recently, however. Jenny Ryan is also busy transitioning between jobs but you can still follow her blog; she's currently researching for danah boyd. As such we haven't had all that much new material here but Eric Gilbert expects to release a very cool paper on Facebook and Social Capital sometime soon.
For now we suggest you make use of this website as a resource. The wiki could still use your help. Jeff might even post up additional interview transcriptions if enough people find them useful.
Summer Updates
08.04.2008 @ 4:28 AM by Jeff Ginger
The summer has brought with it a number of major updates to the site! Some of the most pertinent are as follows:
- A new and revitalized wiki, complete with articles about the various Facebook features, a reference pool, and quick facts. We need your help flushing the wiki out!
- Updates to Jeff Ginger's publications, including The Missing Box, his Masters Paper, and a stand-alone section on Facebook's Background. Also check the full reference list.
- Complete release of documentation and datasets for all of Jeff's work with the Facebook project. This also includes organized transcription excerpts from the interviews which can be a helpful resource for educators.
- Some undergraduate papers.
- A new section for links to research on Facebook abroad.
- Links to the other contributor sites.
- The beginnings of the Guides section.
We're looking forward to hearing what you guys think!