Its uses are extremely varied and versatile due to the nature of the site being the 'middle-ground'/platform for many other technologies. One of the most common examples is Instagram, an online photo-sharing and social-networking service that allows users to take photos, apply filters to them, and post on their profiles with whatever hashtags the user deems 'suitable' for the photo. (E.g. #Yolo, #swag). It has become so popular that Facebook announced its integration into the sites' system. Hashtags have been around for quite some time in other social networking sites, particularly Twitter who fueled the trend. To start off, why did Facebook decide to do this? If you thought it was to do with money from advertisements, then you're correct.
In many cases, the one sharing the instagram photo will always put many hashtags, hardly ever putting only one. What incentive is there to spend time typing many hashtags? Is there a common relationship between the number of hashtags and the person's social behaviour? Humans are rational; they respond to costs and benefits, and appropriately change their behaviour and actions. Thinking it this way, the benefits of putting hashtags outweigh the costs of putting hashtags, or simply put, the pleasure of making up funny hashtags is worth the persons' time spent doing it.
There are many questions regarding the usage of Facebook. Two example questions include: "On average, how often would you post something on Facebook?". "How many people do you have as friends are actually friends?". In this post, I will be exploring the common functions used and common behaviours shown by Facebook users, and their relations to efficiency.
The first type of efficiency (or more accurately, productivity in this case), is the most obvious and simple: time spent. The time spent on Facebook varies very differently between individuals. Many people will think that those who spend more time on Facebook is much less efficient in browsing through his/her news feed, other people's photo etc., and conversely the ones that spend less time are more efficient. That's not necessarily true is most respects unless all the internal factors that would affect browsing time are identical averaged across a number of times used (examples include: number of posts on news feed received, number of posts made by the user, number of photos viewed etc.). In the ideal case above, a direct comparison is possible and easy to compare browsing efficiency between the two users, however, it is difficult in real life for such a perfect scenario to occur. Overall though, the important thing to know is that the frequency of activity on Facebook per time spent will differentiate the productivity between different users.
The next type of efficiency is information filtering. Information is important for efficiency in any market regarding the consumers because it allows for a more allocatively efficient market system, or how the majority interprets, a more useful and convenient browsing experience. Though, not all information you receive on your news feed or notifications are particularly interesting or suitable. Imagine how dull the user experience is when you scroll down your news feed and nothing interests you, and even if you eventually find one thing interesting, you may have had spent surplus time looking through a hundred statuses, adverts etc. Facebook arranges the news feed chronologically sorted into two arranged sets: "top stories" or "most recent", neither of which are particularly effective in filtering useful information actually. So is there a way to improve this function?
Well actually there already is. Users have the option to select 'close friends' or 'family' among their friends, and then click on the 'Friends' sidebar to rearrange the news feed according to the user's choice. Another option is to make a default news feed that arranges your news feed so that the people you have the most frequent activity with (sorted by number of page views, chat messages, photos tagged, pokes, birthday messages etc., or through the manual selection of friends the user wishes to place priority on the news feed) will have priority in the news feed arrangement. It should be relatively simple to do, so the Facebook development team would not be too troubled while improving prioritized information flow for users.
Other than for leisure/entertainment, Facebook offers a platform for firms and individuals to create pages that showcase themselves, their qualities, or promote what each of them has to offer to the public. Additionally, it is essential that the page provides a worthwhile service to those who use it, and most importantly, be worthwhile to the firm or individual for providing the service. For example, my Economics blog offers a service to people who are interested in Economics, IB students taking Economics or doing an Economics Extended Essay, or people and friends generally interested what I write (praise or criticism). All the above points are viable justifications for my page having a beneficial effect on Facebook users of those market segments, so I can assume it is efficient for the viewers (consumers). However, what benefits do I, the producer, get from writing articles and posting it on Facebook? Psychologically, it feels very rewarding when others commend me for the effort I put in. Objectively, continually analyzing and writing allows me to broaden my horizons to develop my thinking abilites. Other potential benefits include differentiating myself as a applicant from other competitors when I apply to universities or jobs, and making money through blogging (not yet). Overall, I think it's safe to say that my blog is efficient for both my target Facebook users and myself.
The third efficiency is inspired by the legendary "Undercover Economist", Tim Harford. In chapter 2 of his awesome book, he defined an efficient situation as "a situation in which it is impossible to find a change that would benefit an individual(s) without making someone else worse off." We can isolate each of the categories as a potential service to the Facebook user who looks at them. Each of these services can be beneficial, neutral, or harmful to the Facebook user. For example, reminding or telling someone of an important event he must attend is a merit service that benefits that person without causing any negative effect to others, therefore the service it offers will make the Facebook user experience more efficient. However, offending someone via messaging, or posting a particularly embarrassing photo of that person will upset them, thus it can be argued that it is not efficient to that person. You will notice that for both scenarios, the respective positive and negative effects mainly affect the individual subjected to the primary effects of receiving the information. If we look at the embarrassing photo example from an indirect/outsider point-of-view, although the person on the photo is the subject of cyber-bullying, others may find it very amusing and reward the photo with a 'like' in the form of a payment. If efficiency in this case represents the information received, there will be a mixture of positive and negative things, thus dulling the overall efficiency to the user. The most common form is analyzing the content to look for positive or negative effects to the user. Of course, the effect will vary from one user to the other. This type is more complicated to analyze as the time lag in between posting, liking or sharing will have any secondary effects in the future.
After combining the above points, it seems that the entire concept of Facebook is a market system in itself. Posts, Statuses, Shares, Photos are goods/services from producers (or providers) that become accessible to consumers via news feed, then receive a payment by people liking or commenting. Overtime, this one-dimensional market process evolved into a two-stage transaction process. A perfect example for this is: "Like for a tbh ("to be honest", but everybody knows that)". For those that have never came across this, here's how it works. First, the person types "like for a tbh", then waits for the likes to come in, and finally spends quite a lot of time (or little time depending on the number of likes) writing tbh's for everyone. And as an added bonus, if the tbh is good, it may be rewarded with a few likes as gratitude. In essence, the transaction goes from the producer to the consumer twice: firstly offering the service, then acting upon the consumers who accepted the service. However, like with any market system, there exists imperfections. Here are some examples:
- Some people who you have as friends on Facebook may be a complete stranger to you, so whatever they post may not be relevant to you at all.
- Chats are private and conceal information to a third party. (Not exactly a bad thing, we like our own privacy)
- Occasionally when you complete any Facebook activity, you may feel that you did not receive the optimal payment for the quality and/or quantity of your post or whatever.
- Asymmetric information between the friends of an account may occur as a result of different levels of access and transparency to information like photos. Remember, not all friends are treated the same!
- False information: not everything about that particular person profile details are accurate like date of birth, education, and workplace.
- Inaccurate payments: for any type of FB activity, the producer may receive insufficient or excessive payment for what it's worth.
The most efficient scenario only occurs when Facebook is perfectly efficient in terms of the content observed, the minimal time one spends relative to the amount of relevant content to that individual, and the perfect allocation of payment. The allocative efficiency is determined by factors such as the content. Realistically, it seems impossible for social-networking sites like to achieve perfect efficiency; that is the unfortunate truth. One rather unfeasible solution is to set a quota of content the user is allowed to post on his/her page daily. Limiting the content would potentially reduce the amount of irrelevant information observed, and thus makes one's visit more worthwhile. But posting statuses, photos, web-links is what makes Facebook what it is. With much fewer posts by your friends, or conversely posts by you to share with your friends, your news feed would look bare and unappealing. If that happened, Facebook would not have become so successful. Another solution may be not to use Facebook at all; this would minimize the time wasted in front of your computer, gives people an incentive to become more active instead of remaining desk-chair potatoes, and cut off cyber-malice directed through harmful posts. But losing a significant means of communication greatly reduces access to information, whether good or bad, thereby widening the asymmetric information gap. Also, if one person quits, that is hardly going to generate a domino effect where it makes everyone quit, so in the end, it is a pointless exercise.
Hope everyone enjoyed this long post and forgive my long absence (summer hoilday chill time!). It is the start of the new school year for many students, good luck!
