What is the purpose of facebook?

[faithfulbattle945]

My friends told me that I should start a facebook account so they can "befriend" me there. I looked at it and see that most people on there are out of their mind. Like this girl from my class who is at best average looking would post pictures of herself posing...and on fb she actually looks decent. In real life not so much. Or people changing their pick every other day...........my question being: why even have a facebook? I wanted one, but I worry that this may make me look like I'm one of the herd. Basically someone with a low self esteem but pretending I got it all together and my life is fabulous. Any thoughts on that? Why do you have a fb if you do?

btw. I'm 25 yrs old. I know there are people on there older than me, idk why I feel like it's high school all over again.

[Martin B]

the purpose of facebook, is to meet new people, chat to them via facebook chat, and to share your feelings, news, and to kill time i absolutely love facebook

[Juan Lopez]

constantly posting pointless statuses that only they like asking people to hangout with them, what people think of them and if someone likes their status they will tell them something. Acting like they have an extremely popular social life often talking about going to the Gym, Drawing, Working or other irrelevant activities that don't require other individuals. playing farmville

[SAFWAN]

to contact people for free without money share things and feelings meet new friends and all

[No Real Help]

It provides a means of communication and the ability to allow people to share the most Intimate and secret details of their lives with the whole world. It also allows people to form cliques where they choose to believe they "belong" to something bigger than themselves.

[colossalzebra577]

Actually I'm using Facebook Just for having fun and It helped me a lot to come back talking to my old friends and There is sharing photos and also you can know the latest news about your favorite singer or actor ........ actually you don't have to post your photos if you don't want to it's up to you

[B S]

I like to see Facebook as a highly-accessible low-level internet forum. You post things on Facebook and it's kind of fun. I'm not a fan myself but I can see why people would like it. It's pretty useful for me for sending private messages.

[VanessaDesi]

There are many reasons why people use it. Some are that people feel the need to tell others about the littlest things they're doing, that you wouldn't mention face-to-face but do on fb for the sake of seeming interesting. I've heard about all the things people say like it's good for getting in contact with relatives and all that, but really, i think that people just love to feel that they know a lot of people. People may chat to a random fb friend every now and then, but i wonder when the last time people had an actual conversation with the people. And there are plenty more people on fb like that girl in your class. My friends tried convincing me to make an account for months and i didn't, they eventually gave up lol.

[araktsu]

The purpose of Facebook is to make a profit for its parent corporation. It does this by charging for advertising space, point-casting (i.e., sending customized ads to demographic targets), and possibly from selling marketing demographic data. From Wikipedia article (at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook):

"Most of Facebook's revenue comes from advertising. Microsoft is Facebook's exclusive partner for serving banner advertising, and therefore Facebook serves only advertisements that exist in Microsoft's advertisement inventory."

You can categorize Facebook with all other social networks, including this one.

Social networking websites collect information from users by simply asking, analyzing web use and searches, and from whatever the user happens to communicate online. You can think of it as being similar to the member card you get from a grocery store, for example. For revealing your buying habits, you get a discount.

The information and services based on the information is typically sold to marketing firms, corporate advertisers, possibly government entities (not necessarily domestic or openly identifying themselves), political entities, and so on.

What the user gets is attention from other users with similar interests, the ability to connect indirectly with millions of users quickly, in some cases the ability to transmit information that would otherwise bring a repressive government down on them. For some users it is merely a vehicle to promote themselves, particularly so with professional celebrities and politicians.

Some users are completely fictitious, so at least some of the content is unreal and unreliable (an understatement, of course). Some of it may even be there for effective propaganda purposes. For example:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun...-macmaster

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0...04,00.html

My answer may seem naive, but then so does your question.

To some extent the direction and characteristics of Facebook will depend on what use members make of it. Members are not a cohesive, integrated club. They are just other people, each with their own unique personalities, culturally acquired beliefs, and so no. There will not doubt be plenty of opportunities offered to you depending on your profile. Not all of them are just other people looking for friends.

As for your statement, "I worry that this may make me look like I'm one of the herd. Basically someone with a low self esteem but pretending I got it all together and my life is fabulous." If you are concerned with self-image, especially if you make statements to that effect, you are telling the whole network what is going on in your mind. If that does not bother you, fine. If it does, then you are really setting yourself up. You are ultimately just one more of nearly seven billion people. Technically, your behavior online is going to fit some demographic profile, not necessarily one that you have in mind.

Life is not a popularity contest. There is much more to this world than advertising yourself. Few if any of the real and vital problems facing our species, for example, are in any way related to self image. But almost certainly there are people on Facebook with only self image in mind and it is currently their main interest in life. (For example, among adolescents this is the case offline both for biological reasons and due to the effect of consumer conditioning.)

The unfortunate part is that there are other people out there who are not very wholesome and who are searching for people they can manipulate for their own goals. You are always at some risk of becoming a victim. You need to know your vulnerability rating as well. That is not always such an easy thing to determine.

[Tick Straight]

To make people think they got friends