Nobody wants to be the kid who only gets invited to birthday parties because his mom calls up the other mom and asks. Everyone knows that only succeeds in making you even more unpopular.
Our guess is a fair number of the geeky employees at Facebook were exactly that kid. Which is why I’m sort of surprised that they’d think asking people to help out Facebook friends who don’t have a lot of Wall activity, or even many other friends. These people get mocked. Obviously.
We’ve all seen the messages under Suggestions on the Facebook home page. So and so only has two friends on Facebook, suggest friends for him? Others are urged to write on the Wall of unpopular users.
A reader writes to us today with a screenshot:
So, apparently facebook is now suggesting you write on a friend’s wall to “make facebook better for them” or “reconnect with them” if they are not getting many wall posts. It’s nice to know that if I’m a facebook loser my virtual mom will call up the other kids and ask if they’ll come play with me. Because that sure worked in the real world when I was 10.
Who knows what levels Facebook will go to to ensure that your unpopularity turns into a mocking sideshow like the one above? Don’t be that guy. Find some friends and convince them to leave a wall post every week or two.
The last thing you want is to be a Featured Loser.
lol this article is hilarious ..:P
The author, however, might have forgotten that to be a “FaceBook loser” can actually be a good thing for people with more life in the real world than in the virtual one…
Wow, never thought it can work this way too.
I’m guessing you’re one of those who gets that message
Has anyone seen a similar suggestion, only it displays a progress bar and says that your friend is “75% active” or something? What does that mean, and why am I encouraged to suggest a profile picture for him?
I think it’s based on what they’ve filled out (profile stuff)
75% active = 3rd base. 100% means much better photo’s for your voyeuristic tendencies.
God yes. FB please stop,.
To me it seems these people who one should “reconnect” with seem to be the the guys who once signed up, but then never really have used Facebook. (Yes, such people exist
That Mum analogy is nice, but I am not sure how far it carries…
The point being, that if you want people to write on your wall, try writing on theirs first!! If you want to connect or reconnect with people, take a little of the initiative.
This is “social media.” If you never talk to anyone, you are unlikely to have anyone talk to you. Social implies some sort of interaction, and it takes more than one person to begin an interaction. That’s how it works.
That’s certainly correct. But how is this connected to what’s said in the article?
Actually, the social aspect applies, just like in high school, when the social people with social skills got all the friends, and the shy ones were left out in the cold and sat at the reject table.
Yeah noticed that a few days ago. The write on the wall ones are a bit sad. I should have print screen the XXXX only has 17 friends. Suggest friends for her. I know XXXX has been on facebook for years. I think she really only wants to communicate with her close friends. FB should back off. Besides if I want to write on someone’s wall, I’ll write on it.
In thinking about the family members of mine that I’ve been prompted to message because of this, I don’t like the thought of you calling them “losers” Mike.
Believe it or not, it’s not obvious to all of us that these people would be mocked. Some of us now have different social interactions than we had when we were in elementary or high school. I’m just sayin’ (and yes, I totally got picked on as a kid)
Marshall meet me on the playground in 10m… I’m gonna kick yr ass something fierce, buddy. better say yr prayers. ps bring your lunch money OR ELSE.
lol, I think it’s a good idea from FB’s perspective.
Bad idea from the loser’s perspective.
Exactly. This is their way of getting existing users to prompt people with accounts that are no longer active to come back. Think of the process like this:
1. FB sees a an inactive account and sends random people “suggestions” to post on their wall.
2. People that know the person with the inactive account in real life go, “Hey, who’s this random person? I’m gonna call my buddy and tell him he’s got this random dude posting on his page.”
3. The inactive person logs into FB again after who knows how long just to write back, “Dude, why are you writing stuff? I’ve never met you before.”
4. This gets one or more of the random people to start full discussions about FB.
5. The person with the recently-inactive page now has an active page and will probably start using FB more.
6. With more people using FB, more people will recommend others that don’t use FB to create a page, if nothing else.
7. The cycle repeats.
It actually seems like a pretty smart move on FB’s part, especially in drawing users of MySpace and other competing social networks. With FB’s desire to become the de facto standard in social networking and the hub of all social interactions, it makes sense for them to get those accounts active again.
FB trying to revive inactive accounts to increase usage statistics reminds me of this:
http://en.wikip...the_Golden_Eggs
It is a smart move by FB to restart activity on inactive accounts. Pretty sure it has nothing to do with “facebook developer geeks trying to help out the loser geek”.
If you deactivated your wall can you still be “featured”?
Pretty soon, they’re going to start suggesting that you ask the engineer-next-door to the prom (literally – using location based services of course).
Today, I saw a suggestion that simply mentioned that a friend had written on his own wall….basically, it was broadcasting that he’s such a loser, he has to write on his own wall for activity… i guess, that’s what it was saying..
>:)
ummm, i think TremendousNews.com said it better in his post on Tuesday, Mike.
http://tremendo...ining-facebook/
Was the cafeteria all out of fresh ideas for posts this morning?
What an awful invasion of people’s privacy. But again that’a all FB does. Awful website
Invasion of what?
That thing you mention – it’s slowly but surely about to disappear. Thanks to the majority of people being naïve.
FB is not free. You pay with your privacy.
If that’s the case i might as well just deactivate my account like many others have done over the months.
I’ll do just that. What a load of rubbish this new marketing entree feature is.
I think this is a clear indication that engagement on the site is dropping. Facebook has long indicated that 30-somethings are their fastest growing segment. Well, I know this group of people. I’ve seen them go through the frantic and exciting exercise of connecting with old friends, checking out ex-girlfriends/boyfriends and generally doing the voyeur thing. Now, MANY of them have connected with most of the people they knew from the past. Seen the pictures, done it. And, now their activity level is dropping. Out of my 500 friends, there are probably 25 active people who update frequently (annoying, actually). The rest are going dormant. If their fastest growing segment is going dormant, that is not good. Of course, the youth demo is highly active and always will be. But, is that enough?
I agree, Kim. I’m in that same bracket and went through a spat of activity along with a bunch of long lost friends from school earlier in life. At this point the level of activity in this crowd has greatly diminished. With that in mind, I’d hazard to make this generalization based on my sense of the “mood” of the crowd: the more successful ones have generally stopped using Facebook at least with any real frequency and the less successful ones have continued to do so. I think some of the familiar social dynamics are kicking in again and people are figuring this out: such that I get the sense that people are now getting hesitant to use Facebook too much as it kinda makes you look like you have nothing better to do.
Of course, I may be wrong, but that is certainly how it seems, and I’ve had this conversation with others recently and they share this observation.
Good Blog Michael, it’s good to know that facebook is looking out for me!!! But I would agree with Pete it is “for the guys who once signed up, but then never really have used Facebook.”
So funny!!!… hilarious!!!
)
If you show up in the tool, it means you’re actually not a loser, because you’re not spending all your time updating your facebook. It means you have a life.
+1.
Keep telling yourself that. And your mommy thinks your handsome.
+1
heh… 17 followers.
That feature just frigging ANNOYED the living daylights out of me. What on earth was FB’s A/P/M/B department thinking? NO WONDER THEY ARE LOSING USERS. THAT IS SUCH AN INVASION OF PRIVACY FFS’S.
Makes me really want to deactivate my account. G** damn you FB.
If someone gave a conference and made the stipulation that everyone who attends must add each other to Facebook, I would be there in a second. I am one of those people described in the article and it is embarassing. What pisses me off, is that people around are always talking about their Facebook. Don’t they know how rude that is if they’ve never invited you but have invited everyone else in the office?
I suspect the Indians have something to do with this.
But wait … the only one active on my Facebook friend list is my mom and my mother-in-law. My cool friends moved on a while ago.
aah… i knew it was susan! (partial information hiding never helps)
A friend of mine who died last year has not been very active on Facebook, obviously, so every now and then I get a suggestion to write on her wall. Spooky.
They suggest me two hot girls. I have nothing to complain about
hahahaa. this is hilarious.
haha I was thinking the exact same when I saw this on my profile earlier. Bad move Fb bad move…
i lol’d.
Hey, isn’t it Marks’ credo to make Facebook reflect your relationships digital you have in the real world? So maybe it is a good thing. Or maybe not, because I don’t see why I should write on their wall when they are not into Facebook.
There are kids out there who are not into Facebook (and don’t post links and upload photos), they are just here to do me a favor, because I asked them to join Facebook so that my profile reflects my real world relationships.
There was a digital divide on a internet connection basis and there will be a digital dived on a application basis.
So stop giving Mark a hard time.
this feature rolled out along with the live feed thingie…a week ago
Facebook is annoying since the stream thing, so it’s just consistency.
The funny thing is the most activity I see on walls are from people who use it as private message.
Facebook is even telling me who to poke now. Which is a little ridiculous.
Facebook needs to back off. I have too many friends in my profile (over 2000) and I really want to get rid of 90% of them. I am now tempted to delete my profile completely because I don’t want to hurt anybody feelings.
I liked FB because it seemed a mature enough platform to let users do what they want with infantilising them. This fluffy rubbish reeks of Bebo.
Not impressed
guess I wouldn’t have minded a nice big patronising ‘are you sure you want to post this?’ 2nd chance with that comment:
*with = without.
I don’t have a Facebook.
It is so lame. Soem people don’t have time for facebook, and its peer pressure to get them to join
I think this could be either helpful or just plain “wrong” or in some cases, sad.
“Wrong” in the sense that FB suggests me to “help” on a friend who no longer capable of updating since he was dead of drowning few months back.
Personally I have no grudge towards this but I could only imagine how this could burst his late gf who once written sad walls every day few months back. I think after few while she stopped doing that, possibly thinking of moving on or whatnot. Just my 2 cents.
This is too funny!
I thought Facebook was for grownups.
When Facebook tells me to stop throwing sand while playing with my friends in the sandbox I am deleting my account!
I think this feature is valid if the assumption is that these users are either just getting started on Facebook, but haven’t reached a critical mass of friends/activity to keep them actively engaged.
For me, it *has* been a reminder to me about people that I’m “friends” with, but haven’t talked to in a while.
That said, if what people above are saying is an indication of future trends (that engagement is dropping), then this feature might be more of an indication about people that have “moved on” to better things.
In which case… I’ll probably FB message them to ask what’s new in their life
Or, if you don’t use facebook often enough to get a natural flow of wall postings, stop using it.
Not funny:
I have a friend who passed away months ago. His girlfriend did not have the courage to close his account.
I often see a suggestion to “get back in touch” with my friend…
Stupid suggestion….