Facebook - 500 Million, But What Happens When Friends Die?
Growth at Facebook has been unbelievable and not a surprise that its user rolls will get to 500 million, but last fall a childhood friend died, and a few months later I was taken aback after Facebook asked me to post on his wall. Since so many new Facebook users are grandparents and over 60 more and more Facebook members will be dying sooner rather than later. A recent article questioned how Facebook determines that some members have died so they can be removed from Facebook, or whether pages should be saved as a memorial. Interesting issue, but then again, if members are never deleted how can one be sure that there are really 500 million members… once someone joins Facebook maybe they stay forever.
On Facebook, Telling Teachers How Much They Meant
One nice benefit of Facebook and Social Media is the ability to find old friends, and a recent article in the New York Times told the story of a 49 year woman who found her high school teacher on Facebook. This teacher apparently had a significant impact on the student’s life and former student spent years searching the Internet to find the old teacher. Social Media allowed this connection to take place.
Do You Have a Phone Book?
A couple of years ago an older woman was lost in my neighborhood, so she stopped me to ask for directions. Unfortunately she did not have an address, only a name so she asked me to look in my white pages. She seemed amazed that I didn’t have any white pages, let alone yellow pages. The Internet has changed so much, it seems like not all that long ago people looked in phone books to find people, and now most of us rely on the Internet and don’t have white pages or yellow pages. Without question Social Media is transforming communications even more…stay tuned for more change.
It seems that all these sites should have rules which kick into play so that at at least annual intervals, the host prompts you to confirm several facts, including the fact that the user is alive. What's so hard about that. After [3?] unreturned prompts, your page would be cancelled (or some other gentle adjective, like "retired" or "abated" or "archived" letting people know, you are not using it anymore, for whatever reason.
Jeez... it ain't rocket science.
You're waxing more and more philosophically these days counselor ... the metaphysics of existence in virtual worlds ... hmmm ... hope life extension is about more than just that!
Enjoy your thoughtful blogs. Keep up the good work!!
Very interesting, Peter. My friend John Kirton noticed the NY TImes article about this very matter:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/technology/18death.html?_r=1&hp
Dr. Ben Laws
>>>>>response
Thanks Ben, as a matter of fact I have a url to that article in my blog (3rd sentence).
Peter
I really doubt Facebook has 500 million. I know people who have several accounts on Facebook. Why? One reason is for the games. People setup multiple accounts as zombies to feed their main account goodies. The games on facebook is what I believe has driven the growth.