Philanthropy on ground would acquire a different meaning, if the inclination to give was as strong as sharing on Facebook.
Praveen Narayan
praveen@bangalured.com
A study conducted by the Pew research center’s internet and American life project on 269 facebook users in the month of November 2010 reveals that users of the social networking site give out a lot more than they receive. The survey was carried out through a random telephone survey with consent from facebook users.
praveen@bangalured.com
A study conducted by the Pew research center’s internet and American life project on 269 facebook users in the month of November 2010 reveals that users of the social networking site give out a lot more than they receive. The survey was carried out through a random telephone survey with consent from facebook users.
The results pointed out that 20-30% of users evaluated were more active than the average users on facebook. Their activities though, were not alike. Some of the frequent users liked sharing information, for some uploading images was a regular fixture, while some spend a lot of their time sending friend requests. It was noted that users received a lot more friend requests than what they individually sent out. 5% of users spent time on all activities available on the networking site.
The results of the research hold significance as it was presented two days after Facebook filed for an initial public offering of $ 5 Billion that could skyrocket, the future value of facebook to $100 Billion.
The use of facebook by different users around the world did not evaluate the financial worth of the users but shed light on the usage of the popular social networking platform.
Facebook relies heavily on its 850 million users worldwide to convince advertisers and investors that the platform is worth a lot more as it provides ample connectivity to help businesses reap maximum benefits through the portal.
The notion that consistent regular use of facebook would lead to fatigue on part of users was nullified as research showed that people spending time on facebook were getting more addicted to networking as they spent longer durations on the site.
Keith Hampton, the study’s main author and a Rutgers University Professor said, ‘it was hard to give up on facebook, for the positive impact it had on individual lives.’ He elaborated saying, it felt good to be on facebook with a whole lot of attention showered by friends and family. The absence of a dislike button ensured that all information shared fell in the ‘like’ category, another motivator for users to spend time on the network. Hampton added, ‘more time people spent on facebook, the more they wanted to do facebook. Emotionally people were receiving a lot more than sharing or giving, is exactly what most people are looking for.
The study conducted in October/November 2010 interviewed 2255 facebook users over phone with an error margin of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points. 12% of individuals agreed to share their facebook data, at the end of the survey.
