By Galia Myron
May 8, 2009
As the collective human attention span seems to be devolving to mere seconds, trend watchers at Iconoculture have already dubbed recent sentiment among some Facebook followers as “Facebook remorse”—that sickening uh-oh feeling in the pit of the stomach when one has been featured in one too many humiliating photos, posts, or comments on the social networking site.
According to the report, which cites numbers from eMarketer, 60 percent of 12- to 24-year-olds say their friends’ Facebook profiles can damage their reputations, while nearly half (48 percent) state that they have been embarrassed by their own postings (from a multinational poll by OTX Research).
Online socializing won’t replace face-to-face contact anytime soon, OTX also found. The top three favorite activities among this cohort include hanging out with friends, listening to music, and seeing boyfriends and girlfriends.
Has Facebook’s wild popularity finally peaked? Are users experiencing Facebook fatigue?
“I do not think ‘fatigue’ is the right word, but ‘overwhelmed’ might be a better moniker,” says online social networking expert Chris Adams, president and CEO of View2gether, a social viewing platform that allows users to gather in an online community to watch, share and customize video content, while chatting with each other in real time.
“I think this has less to do with the proliferation of social networks in general, the terms of service, [and so on], but with Facebook's change in the homepage which, arguably, can be likened mostly to Twitter,” he explains.
The revamping of the homepage prompted many complaints; shortly after its launch, numerous status updates declared, “I hate the new Facebook.”
However, Adams says the new format has its advantages. “This allows for greater speed and real-time dissemination and ingestion of information, but has moved the brand, in my opinion, away from the magic of wanting to see what your friends are ‘doing’ which was more persistent than the rapid-fire ‘what are you thinking?’ present paradigm,” Adams contends.
Communication specialists think sometimes too much communication is just too much. “I like the term ‘Facebook fatigue,’" says communication expert Leslie Ungar, president of Akron, OH-based Electric Impulse Communications, Inc."You’re just tired. You’re not saying you’re never going to use it again, I think it fits.”
Ungar helps companies and individuals optimize their professional performance by honing their communication skills.
While many frustrated users of the networking site expressed dismay at the new design, Adams, a former member of the Facebook leadership team, says reactions varied among generational cohorts.
“I have experienced more push-back amongst Gen X than anything as I believe that Gen Y and Millennials are more adept at embracing and evangelizing new platforms like Twitter,” he explains. “They uptake them faster and they do not get flustered with the inevitable loss of ‘bloom on the rose’ that is tantamount to any online business; by this I mean that people of my generation [Gen X] seem to have embraced Facebook later, but really loved what it offered them and when Twitter came on the scene, they saw it as being confusing and therefore revolted to a certain extent.”
It is precisely the multigenerational impact that Facebook has had on people that may be why some Millennials are drifting, Ungar says. Rather than cite the new homepage design, she says the explosion of Baby Boomers and other older cohorts joining Facebook may have alienated younger users.
"Generation Y and younger Gen X think Facebook has gotten too old for them," she contends. "People on Facebook are their parents. Gen Y prefers Twitter because it is younger."
This is nothing new, she adds. "You always have generations encroaching on other people’s trends. It used to be that daughters wanted to wear their mothers clothes, but today mothers want to wear young people’s clothes," she adds. "Nothing stays one way. Boomers and older Gen X contaminated it for the younger generations."
Younger generations tend to be more flexible since they expect change; as long as they get the job done, Gen Y doesn’t care as much about the medium; they are less attached than their older cohorts are to specific networks. “Younger generations, in my opinion, seem to not care as much about one thing, one platform, one application or another as they seem to sense that everything is changing very fast,” Adams explains. “To them, as one platform or application serves its purpose, it's onto the next one. This can been seen in striking relief with the fact that Facebook arguably took three and a half to four years to really take hold whereas Twitter's entire zeitgeist can be tracked over the last six months.”
With Millennials’ ability to switch platform so quickly, will Facebook be tossed aside in favor of the newest and freshest? No, Adams says. Rather than replace Facebook, other sites are more likely to complement or work synergistically with the well-established network, he notes.
“Twitter has augmented Facebook in that one can tweet a short message which will not only go out into the Twittersphere but also operate as one’s Facebook status update,” he explains. “I think that efficiency paradigms of this sort are being embraced en masse by younger generations and I do not think it should be seen as an abandonment of Facebook, but rather an enhancement, which is perfectly natural to them.”
The social utility, Adams adds, can serve as a “foundation upon which people can build the framework of their life in the form of information, content and community as a toolset.”
The future of Facebook? It looks solid, but Adams says it will have to keep up with the rapidly changing times. “Obviously, like any business, Facebook will have to evolve and grow and be seen historically as the product of a certain time in the evolution of the web and perhaps a signature Web 2.0 company,” he explains. “I believe they will be a resonant brand like eBay and Amazon, but it is safe to say that before too long, new platforms, sites and experiences will rise on the web that will capture the imagination, attention and membership of a next generation of users.”
“For the time being, there is only one Facebook, but Twitter and Flutter and other sites are both enhancing the social networking experience yet not replacing the core foundation,” he adds.
Ungar says that while popular, Twitter and other networking sites will eventually plateau, but will still have their place in people's lives. "Anything you do with the frequency that Twitter and Facebook fans do will wear out, but they will continue to exist," she says. "Eventually the newness wears out. It is like when you are 16 and you get your driver's license and you want to go on every errand. Eventually you don’t want to pick up your sister everyday."
Perhaps people will tire of feeling "like hamsters on a wheel," Ungar adds. "They will eventually have to find some balance between life on an electronic piece of equipment and a real life. That balance will be different for everyone," she says. "Life just on Twitter or Facebook is tiring, but using them to supplement life is not going to get tiring."
It seems as if nothing replaces face-to-face contact, according to anecdotal and statistical surveys. Adams agrees. “At the end of the day, people interacting with other people in real life, in real time about real things in real places sharing reality and creating real experiences and memories will never wane,” he maintains.
Humans are by nature quite social, and require personal contact to thrive and nothing virtual can replace real get-togethers.
“Social networks like Facebook give people an amazingly robust, quick, efficient and easy way to make personal connections easier,” Adams says. “Friendships, relationships, community and acquaintances seem more real or actually become more real as relationships need and demand work, nurturing and attention.”
Facebook is a utility akin to the phone CB radio, email and other forms of communication meant to enhance connections, he adds; it does help people get to know one another better. Because of our innate need to connect, it looks as if it is here to stay.
“Of course all sites will go through periods of explosive growth and then plateau, but if Facebook continues to evolve and try new things and grow, then it can become the evergreen brand I believe it aspires to be,” Adams maintains.
Shared experiences are bonding, and View2gether, Adams adds, allows online socializing to go beyond the basics. “It is platform that empowers users to become channel programmers within sites they know and love,” he says.
The site allows for greater personalization, by which users create personalized channels and playlists to express themselves in a unique manner, sharing this content with others.
“This is not something new or far out, but rather a natural extension of how people always have and do behave. Going back millennia, people like to congregate around great content to share not only in the story/theme/characters/plot, but also to be caught up in and react to the way others are reacting to that very content,” Adams says.
Like watching a film in a theater with a large group of people that laughs, screams, cries, or cheers at the same time, Adams adds, social media helps create that audience. “We are all human and community and connectivity is part of the soul of who we are, which helps to both define us individually as well as collectively despite our many differences,” he says.
“Social media platforms and technologies are helping this massive aggregation of audience, distribution and content blend into a global socio-technological experiment which, ironically, is becoming more and more like human behavior and this is where I think everything is heading—toward a place in which the Facebooks of the world and all those technologies that work with it and come from it, address at a core level who we are as humans and how we live, work and play with each other,” Adams concludes.
"As a communication expert, my hope is that there will be balance," Ungar says."All these venues add value, but used exclusively, they detract."
News relevant to demographic trends--such as the generational trends of Baby Boomers, Generation X, Generation Y, and Matures--is posted several times a week on www.demodirt.com and demo dirt GOLD. To contact the editor, please email Galia Myron.
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