The Facebook Thing
How old am I? So old that when someone says Facebook I still think of what was colloquially called The Facebook, the hard-bound directory of Harvard’s incoming class, so vital in laying the groundwork for your future cabal to control the world. The website was named after it. I find myself now wondering a) does Harvard still print it and b) if so, what do the kids call it now?
Some time ago, I made the decision to rise above such faddish things and not join. What’s the point of having a computer and going on-line if you are just going to use it to interact with other people? If I wanted to do that, I could do it in real life.
But I think I may have miscalculated. I had no idea just how pervasive Facebook would become. Two days ago, Facebook announced it had 500 million active users. That is a number so large it is difficult to put it in context. The planet contains, allegedly, 1.8 billion internet users, so Facebook has now roped in 28% of them. At the current rate of growth, 10% a month, they should have everybody around September 2011.
I plan to sign up for an account then. Because I am the last person on Earth who would join Facebook.
Facebook is now the single most popular site on the internet. And, logically or ironically, the company that provides it is now widely despised. Sort of like how an addict loves the cocaine but hates his dealer.
According to Facebook, and as quoted in The New York Times so it must be true, users spend a total of 700 billion minutes a month there. That is an average of 46 minutes per user per day. According to a recent survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Americans spend an average of 42 minutes a day “socializing and communicating.”
I am not sure if the BLS means to include Facebooking in that line item or not. If not, then we now spend more time socializing on-line than in real life. Alternatively, if it is included, then all socializing done by Facebook users is now on-line. For all I know, that could be true. Not really my field.
But even if there are still some Americans who socialize the old traditional way, it should be clear that the days of physical interaction are numbered. Facebook is just too large to be stopped, its gravitational pull too strong and getting stronger every day.
By the time I sign up in fourteen months, Facebook will have completed its absorption of all socializing done by members of my species with an internet connection on my home planet. And it will not stop there. 46 minutes a day is only a meager portion of human waking hours. It will grow until it will no longer be an alternative to real life. It will be real life. Resistance is futile.
Musings | Frank Curmudgeon | 
July 23, 2010 11:59 am
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By Kosmo @ The Soap Boxers, July 23, 2010 @ 2:51 pm
I joined Facebook a year or so ago. It’s a convenient way to keep up with how high school classmates are doing … but I mostly joined to ply WordScraper (similar to Scrabble).
I detailed more of my uses in a post a while back -> http://www.thesoapboxers.com/how-this-thirty-something-uses-facebook/
I can’t imagine spending hours on end playing Mafia Wars and Farmville, though. I just play my words in Wordscraper, glance at the news, and head off to do something else (such as changing poopy diapers).
By The Head Hunter, July 23, 2010 @ 5:25 pm
This headline was misleading, I thought the article would be about spending your life building a successful 26 billion dollar company just to have some former rinky dink contract employer lay claim to it through some vague ip agreement…
By Jonathan Warren, July 23, 2010 @ 8:07 pm
If Facebook had been public I would have bought about two years ago. And today I would sell.
I’m looking forward to the movie.
By Dan, July 26, 2010 @ 10:54 am
Frank,
One of your assumptions might be faulty, cause I think you’re implying that every facebook user is an active user. If there’s 500 million “active users” then it stands to reason that facebook has roped in MORE than 28% of the internet community. Surely, facebook has many additional members that aren’t active? You’d then have to figure that facebook will have permeated the entire internet community sooner than you think.
And as far as large companies that everybody depends on, yet they despise, perhaps facebook is the new Microsoft?
By Josh, July 26, 2010 @ 2:18 pm
Dan,
When Internet sites refer to “active” users, they don’t mean “users who use the site a lot”. They usually mean “users who are still using the site”, which is important because most web sites have many accounts that were created and then abandoned after a few weeks or months.