05 November 2015

The Wall Street Journal: “Facebook Prods Users to Share a Bit More”

Facebook Social Sharing Slippage

In August, Facebook urged him and others to “join the conversation about the tube strike” in London. Mr. Fiori, who has been on Facebook for almost a decade, said it was the first time he had seen such a prompt from the social network.

“Honestly, it didn’t work,” he said. “The topic wasn’t really one I’d share thoughts about.”

He did, however, post about the tube strike on Twitter.

Deepa Seetharaman

Interesting survey, and an ironic way to close the article, given how good Facebook the business is doing financially, and how poorly Twitter’s results are received.

As a long-time Facebook user myself, a certain amount of fatigue is to be expected. I visit the site less often, usually to check new notifications, and my habits started changing lately from checking what my connections are sharing to following photographers. I couldn’t help noticing how Facebook started showing more diverse notifications in recent months, for example when random friends update their statuses or are attending nearby events, thereby prompting me to open the app – small anecdotic support for the findings of the article. I also couldn’t find a way to turn off these notifications about events – I am still perfectly capable of coordinating with friends without Facebook events.

Another interesting quote from the article below. This reminded me of the Facebook study last year about the emotional effects of news feed manipulation. It shows the adverse effects of an always-happy mindset: people with negative emotions feel misunderstood and shut out. With all the negativity on Twitter, at least people are sincere there.

Vanessa Clark said she visits Facebook daily, but doesn’t post as frequently as she did a few years ago. The 29-year-old student and home health-care provider said she used to write about her daily stresses, but now holds back.

“I don’t want to post anything negative anymore,” she said.

Post a Comment