Who uses Facebook? An investigation into the relationship between the Big Five, shyness, narcissism, loneliness, and Facebook usage

heh.

The unprecedented popularity of the social networking site Facebook raises a number of important questions regarding the impact it has on sociality. However, as Facebook is a very recent social phenomenon, there is a distinct lack of psychological theory relating to its use. While research has begun to identify the types of people who use Facebook, this line of investigation has been limited to student populations. The current study aimed to investigate how personality influences usage or non-usage of Facebook. The sample consisted of 1324 self-selected Australian Internet users (1158 Facebook users and 166 Facebook nonusers), between the ages of 18 and 44. Participants were required to complete an online questionnaire package comprising the Big Five Inventory (BFI), the Narcissistic Personality Inventory – 29-item version (NPI-29), the Revised Cheek and Buss Shyness Scale (RCBS), and the Social and Emotional Loneliness Scale for Adults – Short version (SELSA-S). Facebook users also completed a Facebook usage questionnaire. The results showed that Facebook users tend to be more extraverted and narcissistic, but less conscientious and socially lonely, than nonusers. Furthermore, frequency of Facebook use and preferences for specific features were also shown to vary as a result of certain characteristics, such as neuroticism, loneliness, shyness and narcissism. It is hoped that research in this area continues, and leads to the development of theory regarding the implications and gratifications of Facebook use.

Should you friend your parents on Facebook?

Well, my son was a friend on Facebook and then about an year back, he defriended me : ( or whatever the correct term is. Then my mum joined Facebook so i friended her. Bit challenging eh? Here’s a convenient flow chart if faced with this conundrum. Not that it worked for my son who lives at home, isn't planning to move out in the new year and has an apartment of his own..I guess he is now in the “little shit” category, and provides a simple test of when he grows up when he friends me again, eh? lol

What are your kids doing?

My ancestral fraud

Heh, found this exceedingly funny, got an email on facebook. Check this out.

 

facebook

Mohamed sent you a message.

Mohamed Fahab

September 10, 2010 at 9:50pm

Subject: Dear Bhaskar Dasgupta,

Dear Bhaskar Dasgupta,
I am Barrister Mohamed Fahab, personal attorney to Late Mr J.C.Dasgupta,a national of your country, Who died and left some huge amount of money with a bank here in Lome West Africa, valued at US$8.5 million dollars. I have contacted you to assist. Please Reply To My Private Email Ad...(mr_mohamedfahab00@hotmail.com) Or call me +228 9177735
Your Full nam.....................................
Your private number...........................
Your private email..............................
Regard
Mohamed Fahab,

Facebook 'sparked white flight from MySpace'

This was WTF at so many levels.

A "WHITE flight" to Facebook has turned MySpace into a black ghetto, according to a social analyst in the US. anah Boyd said Facebook's arrival sparked a migration from MySpace of white users, the educated and the wealthy, while non-whites had stuck together on MySpace.

MySpace is owned by News Corp, the parent company of the publisher of NEWS.com.au. "It wasn't just anyone who left MySpace to go to Facebook," Ms Boyd, who works with Microsoft Research New England, told a crowd at New York's Democracy Forum. "We might as well face an uncomfortable reality ... what happened was modern day 'white flight'." Ms Boyd said MySpace had become a digital "ghetto".
"The people there are more likely to be brown or black and to have a set of values that terrifies white society," she said. Her interviews with American teenagers since 2006 showed that online migration mimicked the patterns of class groups' movements across cities.

Farcebook of Perth

She found teens who preferred Facebook were far more likely to talk down to those who use MySpace than vice versa. Ms Boyd said her research showed high school students found Facebook "more cultured" and "less cheesy" than MySpace. "Any high school student who has a Facebook page will tell you MySpace users are more likely to be barely educated and obnoxious," she said.
Ms Boyd also warned that the class divisions on social sites will harden over time. "Their decision to (move to Facebook) was wrapped up in their connections to others, in their belief that a more peaceful, quiet, less-public space would be more idyllic."

The economics of Web 2.0 banking

A curious item came through my in-box. This was the headline sentence.

half of Facebook users would use Web 2.0 applications for online banking, while a quarter would even consider switching banks to obtain Web 2.0 services

And this

However, as Worklight encourages banks to adopt Web 2.0 technologies, a new person-to-person social lending Web site is launching today, looking to take advantage of the increasing difficulties US students face securing loans from banks in the post-credit crunch market.

The credit crisis has led to traditional lenders such as banks and credit unions declining some student borrowers who would previously have qualified for college loans. The new GreenNote site is the second P2P marketplace in the US dedicated solely to student loans to launch in the last month, following in the footsteps of rival Fynanz.

To use the service, students set up an online profile and then connect to their social networks to get loans from friends, family and communities. Students must borrow as least $1000 although lenders can offer as little as $100.

Does anybody see the resemblance to microlending? Its not new, just the distribution channel (Web 2.0) is new, this allows atomisation of lending and borrowing, but it is dependent upon having sufficient volume to make money. See this as an example of how difficult it is to make money out of this kind of business:

How much will you charge? $1 per $100 loaned? Lets run with that figure for now. You have 1 website, 20 employees, funding costs, etc. etc. and you are up to a million dollars before you can say facebook.

So to just cover your costs (and assuming you do not have any other sources of funding), you need a million users actively purchasing these loans before you break even. You can sell advertisements, you can use mashups of your records with others to sell other stuff to your customers (will be illegal in many places) etc. etc.

This is not going to be easy and this is what I am struggling with, who will pay for all these whizz bang stuff on the internet?

Saudi woman killed for chatting on Facebook

This is unbelievable.

read and weep.

Saudi woman killed for chatting on Facebook
By Damien McElroy
Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Last Updated: 12:53pm BST 31/03/2008



A young Saudi Arabian woman was murdered by her father for
chatting on the social network site Facebook, it has emerged.

The
unnamed woman from Riyadh was beaten and shot after she was discovered in the
middle of an online conversation with a man, the al-Arabiya website reported.

The case was reported on a Saudi Arabian news site as an example of the
"strife" the social networking site is causing in the Islamic nation.

advertisement
Saudi preacher Ali al-Maliki has emerged as the
leading critic of Facebook, claiming the network is corrupting the youth of the
nation.

"Facebook is a door to lust and young women and men are spending
more on their mobile phones and the Internet than they are spending on food," he
said.

The woman was murdered in August but her death was highlighted
following Maliki's comments.

Social customs and religious rules oblige
women in Saudi Arabia to cover their head and figure with a veil so that men are
not distracted by the female form.

Critics also allege that Facebook is
an avenue for the promotion of homosexual relations in Saudi Arabia. More than
6,500 people have signed the online petition in a bid to stop the conservative
Muslim kingdom following Syria in banning access to the network from local
internet servers.

There are estimated to be more than 30,000 Facebook
users in the oil-rich kingdom. Many Saudi women use nicknames and post comic
images or drawings on their pages instead of photographs. Some Saudi bloggers
have dubbed the network "Faceless".

Women users' contact details and
email addresses are often pseudonymous. The popularity of sites for singles has
broken taboos on people making contact outside family and class connections.

One of the most popular Facebook groups among Saudi Arabian youth is
Single and Looking in Saudi Arabia, which has 1,823 members and hosts many
sexually explicit images.

Facebook Banned in Syria

Very amusing.

Ammar al-Qurabi, head of the National Association for Human Rights, said little independent political content published by Syrians on the Internet is now tolerated.

"We have asked officials and they said Facebook could become a conduit for Israeli penetration of our youth, but the real reason for blocking the forum because it provides for criticism of the authorities," Qurabi said. 

lol@Israeli penetration! The Zionists are heavy into Facebook and are sending hot bricks and electronic kisses to Syrian Youth!, lol.

Technorati Tags: Syria , Internet , Israel

Facebook and the enterprise: Part 1 | confused of calcutta

Facebook and the enterprise: Part 1 | confused of calcutta

and Part 2, are some very well argued arguments about how facebook is evolving so fast and quickly. It also addresses several (in my opinion, slightly Luddite) views on how the broader enterprise reacts to personal productivity tools. JP Rangaswami is an iconic figure in the city of London and has long experience of financial markets. I interviewed him 4 years ago and now he has moved on to be one of the main strategos at BT. Very impressive chap. Anyway, happy reading, its quite interesting indeed. Guess what? at one time, the firms banned direct dial on their phones because of worries that they will get distracted from work! (familiar or what?)

If nothing else, I strongly suggest adding his blog to your RSS reader. I use this