Making Sense of Facebook

I've been thinking lately about the dynamics of Facebook. I think there might be a real article in this, so I'm not going to go really deep into it here, but I thought I'd just write out a few ideas off the top of my head. I was talking with a friend the other night, and she pointed out how frequently the differences between how one interacts with a given person on Facebook and in real life can be quite stark.

In my own experience, I tend to think this is true. I think it is probably true of any electronic communication; there is something freeing about writing in bits and bytes that changes the social dynamic and frees people to communicate more. This is observable more in Facebook because it is a social networking system based primarily on real world connections, at least during most of its history. By initially limiting those who could join to those who had proof of membership in certain organizations (schools and businesses), it insured that quite a few of a person's Facebook friends are also real world friends from that organization.

The real value of Facebook in my estimation is that it is a useful way of sharing information and staying in touch with those one knows from the brick and mortar world. I resisted the idea of joining for quite awhile simply because I like to go against the flow. I'd rather do something different. But, this useful value to Facebook convinced me that maybe going with the crowd wouldn't be such a bad idea. The emphasis is obvious: not only do you have to prove your membership in a particular network (other than the regional networks), one also is encouraged to denote how one knows friends (e.g. work together, took classes together, etc.). All but five of my Facebook friends are people I have actually met.

Like I said, I think this also makes for a stark contrast, though. Because I know these people offline, I know how I interact with them normally. Because of this, I can note that I talk to some people on Facebook quite a bit more than I ever did in real life. This isn't bad at all, but it is a curious phenomenon. What does that indicate? I'm not quite sure, but I'm thinking about this. A few cases can be explained easily: they are people I would talk to more, but I may not see all that often. Other cases are more puzzling.

Really, it might be a good topic for a sociologist to pick up on.