Posts Tagged ‘web 2.0’
Re-inventing communication – engaging in Facebook
Probably as any other person reading this blog, I don’t have much free time – I mean in between my job and my social ‘duties’ (to call all activities with my friends), quite frankly I barely have time to breath.So when I was first told about Facebook, I thought: “well, yet another ‘social’ networking tool – in other words, sign up, make a profile, write about yourself something that would probably stop representing you in 2 months … quite headache – besides at the time I was a huge LinkedIn fan (still am, don’t get me wrong).
But soon, I’ve been pulled into the Facebook whirl and have been religiously using it ever since. But I always get one and the same question from my less web-savvy friends – what’s all about? Why is Facebook that great? And there is one word to describe it: engagement. I mean, unlike any other site, Facebook allows communication taking into account not only the verbal occurrences (written messages), but also signs – I would even dare to say they built it ‘semiotically’.
A real example would be a person whose acquaintance you made years back. Somehow, you like the person, but you can’t really interact by email – you’re not that familiar to know exactly what to say all the time so you can maintain a relationship, the same goes for instant messaging. The professional networks are out of question, as you may not even know where they work. And for the first time, we have Facebook, the perfect tool to ‘poke’ o say ‘hi’, share picture, send a drink, take a quiz to find out your friends’ affinities, play games (my favourite is ‘vampires’) and so on.
Basically, what Facebook brought new was the non-verbal communication pattern, something we’d all do in real life and on what human interaction is based, small gestures to help us discover other people and maintain relationships.
A smartly built human application where the user is the generator and the intended.
