Attention, The Facebook Psychology
Sashi Buri! Do you know that your most beloved Facebook was created by a 20 year-old geek in his college dorm (5 years ago), and a movie about it will be released this year starring no other than Justine Timberlake?
Well, if you are reading this post, it’s 99.9 percent that you are a Facebook user and you are somewhat curious with the title above. The only thing you and I know is that, Facebook is the best social networking site ever existed in this friggin’ universe. And you know that I’m not making a baseless statement. I can attest to this and I can personally go into detail why Facebook is the most superior social networking site in the world wide web.
Aside from the usual social networking features (well, they are really not usual but I will go into details about this in my next post), there is this main factor which makes FB superior among other social networking sites. I’m referring to TOUCH. Touch is a term in psychology which is parallel to ATTENTION. From infanthood to adulthood (an even from conception), the human consciousness always craves for this kind of warmth and bliss. Everyone loves attention. Well, not necessarily to become the center of it, but attention from the people they treasure like friends, lovers, family members, and the likes. Most children who lack attention have high probability of becoming rebellious and tend to develop self hate and low confidence when they grow up.
So, what is the physical or rather virtual manifestation of attention in Facebook? We can start with its “like” feature. Believe it or not, you can’t find this feature in other social networking sites. FB pioneered the use of the “like” button that enables users to like theirs or other users’ statuses, photos, notes, posts, quizzes results, and all activities published on their newsfeeds and walls. This button looks like any other button out there but if you will examine it closely, it is actually one of the reasons why most FB users are active and love to share their online activities with friends. If your status is being liked by your friends, it’s a positive form of attention and you will surely post another one again and again.
Another feature that triggers the manifestation of attention is the “tag” feature. If you found out that someone tagged you in his/her note (or post, or photo), the very first thing that would come into mind is that, that person remembers you and he/she wanted to share something with you. Being tagged would give you a feeling of belongingness and can actually hype up your self-esteem. Being tagged means that the person who tagged you has given an ounce of his time in paying attention to who you are.
The last feature that would make a complete combo to the features I mentioned above, is the “comment” feature. This is rather a common one, but it is only in FB wherein you can comment in every activity your friends published (on their walls or newsfeeds). Just like the like button, comments are one of the strongest manifestation of attention you can get after posting your activities on your wall. But, it could result to positive or negative reinforcement. Unlike the like button which only gives positive reinforcement, the comment feature can actually affect your temperament especially if the comments are bashful and indifferent, and contain personal attacks. This is actually the form of attention that most users wanted to avoid. Uhmn, well, there are actually deviant ones. These are FB users who would do everything to anger or irritate anyone in their networks just to gather lots of comments. They are called KSP (Kulang Sa Pansin).
Conclusion: Like button + tag + comment = The FB Attention Combo.
Ja Mata Ne!
Most Commented Posts
Tags: facebook psychology, psychology of facebook
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