March 2010 Archives

What's the difference between liking something and being a fan of something? Facebook is about to change the way its users think of that difference - and in doing so, reveals some fascinating insights about what the social media giant wants from its users.

The blog Inside Facebook reports that the social media giant is changing the way that people interact with their Pages product, switching from users connecting with the page by "becoming a fan of" it to simply "liking" the page. "People already 'Like' their friends' status updates, photos and links everyday," explains Facebook to its advertisers in a memo released by MediaMemo. "In fact, people click "Like" almost two times more than they click "Become a Fan" everyday." The memo goes on to explain that the decision was due to research indicating that users were more apt to "like" pages than to "become a fan of" them - a change that will result in advertisers being more present on people's Facebook feeds than before.

While this seems like a slight change, we are talking about the website that is consistently in the top two of web traffic worldwide - the company who effectively made the word "friend" into a verb, at that - the semantics of the change are quite fascinating. Simply put, liking something is different than being a fan of something. "Like" in the verb form used by Facebook refers to a fondness for something - a form of attraction weaker than love, and distinct from it in important ways. "Fan," on the other hand, is short for a fanatic - a person with an intense, occasionally overwhelming love and and enthusiasm for something. "Being a fan of" something is different than "liking" something because fandom implies more dedication and more enthusiasm. Users are acclimated to indicating fairly strong connections with the users and pages that they want to have more present on their feeds by "becoming a friend of" someone or "being a fan of" something - switching to "liking" things as a means of making them more present collapses this commitment. Will users also eventually switch to "liking" their friends rather than friending them, as well?

The shift away from fandom on Facebook also indicates another fascinating quality of social media: the breaking down, if only on a slight level, of what social scientists term "parasocial interaction". "Parasocial interactions" are one-sided relationships in which one party knows a great deal about the other, but the other does not - the sort of relationships that people may have with celebrities they like, or that performers have with their audiences. Facebook users expect to interact with other users, even if those users are celebrities - hence the huge number of comments in the photo sections of most celebrity pages, despite the lack of any significant replies to these comments. 

The abandonment of "becoming a fan" of pages may even indicate what it is that Facebook as a company wants from its users. In Scaling the Web: A Parasocial Interaction Scale for World Wide Web Sites, researcher John Hoerner of the University of Alabama asserts that the traditional person-to-person structure of fandom gives way to a person-to-construct relationship in the online setting. "The literal, mediated personality from the newscast or soap opera of the past [around which the original PSI-scale was framed] is gone," Hoerner explains. "The design metaphor, flow of the web experience, and styles of textual and graphic presentations of the information all become elements of a website persona and encourage parasocial interaction by the visitor/user with that pesona." So, in a sense, what the Facebook team are doing as they collect an ever-increasing data set about their users is creating the ultimate parasocial interaction - they know everything about us, but we know virtually nothing about them. We the users become the object of fandom. In that regard, "being a fan of" something on Facebook doesn't make sense - but Facebook wanting to know what it is that we "like" does.

We've talked before about Facebook's tracking of the overall happiness of their users. Now, the Facebook Data Team has expanded their study to look at three more English-speaking nations: the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada! 

Their new studies have revealed some fascinating trends in international happiness. Christmas, New Year's Eve and Valentine's Day are amongst the happiest days across the board for English-speaking countries. The weekly increase and decrease in Gross National Happiness is visible in all countries, with Friday, Saturday and Sunday being the happiest days of the week for everybody. 

More good news: the English-speaking world is feeling more jovial! "Negativity is trending down over time for most nations," cites the Facebook Data Team, "likely due to the changing demographics of Facebook users that now include more older people, and perhaps also due to the economic recovery. " The latter is in keeping with the four pillars of Gross National Happiness index: the promotion of sustainable development, preservation and promotion of cultural values, conservation of the natural environment, and establishment of good governance. However, the former assertion - that an increase in older users results in an increase in the relative happiness registered on Facebook - is a bit more mystifying. Is teen angst really that big a factor in bringing down a nation's collective mood?

So, who's happiest? Facebook isn't going to tell, and due to their methodology, they couldn't figure it out anyway. "Each nation is analyzed separately to control for differences in population, and for cultural differences in how people use language," they explain. "However, this methodology precludes us from making meaningful comparisons between nations' happiness levels: We don't know which nation's citizens are the happiest." In other words, don't count on Facebook to help you decide who to bet against the next time you're wagering on a cricket match.

Give Rachel a YJGM-style congratulations - go guess her personality! Considering the library and information science interest, I hypothesize that her "Disciplined" bubble is going to be pretty big.

YouJustGetMe users on the whole are the sort of people who like to see beneath the surface of people and the world. However, does this make us a happier bunch - or more depressed by the things we find when we go into the depths?

The study "Eavesdropping on Happiness", published in the February 2010 issue of Psychological Science, does something that few other studies have tried to do - look practically at the day-to-day behaviors of happy people to see what their lives look like. Researchers Mehl, Vazire, Holleran, and Clark of the University of Arizona ask "Is the happy life characterized by shallow, happy-go-lucky moments and trivial small talk, or by reflection and profound social encounters?"

What Dr. Mehl and his team found that people who had more substantive conversations - people who picked apart subjects, looked deeply into meaning and implication, and attempted to place their topics of discussion in context with a larger world - were happier than those who did not regularly engage in meaningful discourse. It directly opposes the concept that ignorance is bliss, or that unhappy people are somehow smarter or deeper than those who are happy. "We found this [study] so interesting, because it could have gone the other way -- it could have been, 'Don't worry, be happy' -- as long as you surf on the shallow level of life you're happy, and if you go into the existential depths you'll be unhappy," Dr. Mehl was quoted in a recent interview with the New York Times.

Dr. Mehl, demonstrating more practical-mindedness than many of his colleagues, wonders if people can increase their level of happiness by challenging themselves to engage in more substantive conversations during their day. "It's not that easy, like taking a pill once a day," Dr. Mehl said. "But this has always intrigued me. Can we make people happier by asking them, for the next five days, to have one extra substantive conversation every day?"

Anyone else planning to try?

Why is Chatroulette so popular? Perhaps people are more anxious to connect than ever - and the controversial site may not be equipped to help them do that.

Chatroulette was created by a Russian teenager only four months ago - and has dramatically entered the zeitgeist as the latest online application to cause worldwide media buzz. As the New York Times recently described, Chatroulette "drops you into an unnerving world where you are connected through webcams to a random, fathomless succession of strangers from across the globe. You see them, they see you. You talk to them, they talk to you. Or not." It's basically a fusion of old-school chat rooms, video conferencing, and chaos - and at any given time has more than 50,000 users running amok meeting other strangers.

To some, the exercise is futile - and to others, quite *ahem* stimulating. The site is profoundly NSFW - and Not Safe For Coffeehouses either, as YJGM's own Nick discovered while researching this blog post. "I'm worried I may have PTSD now," he murmured softly as he quickly shut his computer on a particularly disturbing Chatroulette match, only to turn around to see the barista standing white-faced behind him, her mouth open in shock. "Sir, I have to ask you to not view inappropriate materials here."

What Chatroulette lacks is, well, the game of roulette. Rather than being a gamble, Chatroulette is basically channel-surfing - only, in a bizarre and dehumanizing turn, users surf through people. "It's like an online Lord of the Flies," explains Sarita Yardi, a doctoral candidate at the Georgia Institute of Technology who studies the role of technology in teenagers' lives. ""There's no log in, there's no registration, and that's fundamentally different from Facebook and Twitter, where your real persona is tied back to you." The effect that we saw while using the site for only a short amount of time was that people demonstrated some of the worst human qualities - name-calling, anonymous cyber-bullying, demonstration of bizarre perversions, and general lack of civility. It was disturbingly clear that many users of the site really do not relate to the strangers that they are matched with as real people, and didn't treat them as such.

One way to make Chatroulette synch up more clearly with human nature - and, frankly, to make it less attractive to the sort of users that lead some news networks to describe the site as the newest in Internet danger and cause YJGM's own Nick to blush - is to add in some sort of time cost in order to prohibit endless scanning. "Imagine that before you first hit Play and encountered your first stranger, you were required to bet a minimum amount of time you would spend together before the Next button was enabled," suggests Dr. Todd Essig of Psychology Today. "You would only be matched with people who had bet at least that same amount of time. Of course you could continue to bet zero. But imagine if you could also choose a 1 minute minimum, or 5, or anything you wanted and then only get matched with someone who made a bet that was at least as large. My bet is that as people are more accountable, as they put more of their time on the line, there would be fewer [obscene displays] and many, many more interesting chats."

How else could one humanize Chatroulette? It could incorporate a faster means of extrapolating information about other users. Having a profile and perhaps a YouJustGetMe-style bubble graph of another user's personality could give users a quick means to extrapolate whether the person they're connecting with is worth their time. However, this would also rob Chatroulette of one of its central points of difference from other social media: its chaotic anonymity. In a way, Chatroulette is social media that is profoundly antisocial - it provides none of the means that other sites provide to create relationships. There are no friend lists, no descriptive profiles, nothing but a person in front of you for a minimum of one second's time. It provides almost exactly as much information as, say, the 1990s trend of speed dating - and the case may be that, once the initial thrill runs out, Chatroulette will seem just as passé.

Should people see you the way you see yourself? Should you change your appearance to ensure it?

Barbie, that iconic fashion doll, illustrates this dilemma with her newest career choice: Computer Engineer Barbie. The first doll to be assigned a career by popular vote, Mattel exclaims that "this digital diva engineers the perfect geek-chic look, with hot pink accessories and sleek gadgets to match." ChipChick explains that Mattel worked closely with the Society of Women Engineers and the National Academy of Engineering to ensure that computer engineer Barbie met the standards of her title.

However, not everyone is seeing Computer Engineer Barbie the way Mattel sees her. "Obviously inspired by Elle Woods, Computer Engineer Barbie proves that you can be smart and still wear pink," explains Amy Nicole Miller, Pop-Culture Editor of Velvet Park Magazine and the genius behind Lez Bobo the Clown. "However, it seems that in order to be taken seriously, glasses continue to be a required accessory. So you young girls with 20/20 vision, start practicing your pole dancing because only the nearsighted succeed." Many other critiques of Computer Engineer Barbie poke fun at her femininity - "the critics imply that real coders aren't feminine, and feminine coders aren't real," states Mashable's Rebecca Zook.

History provides a refutation to the idea that Computer Programmer Barbie needs to change her appearance to be authentic to her career. It's often overlooked that the first coder was, in fact, an extremely fashionable lady. Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron and Anne Isabella Milbanke, was the first person to conceptualize and articulate what computers were capable of doing, and the first to foresee that computers could create artificial intelligence, generate graphics, and create music. She was also a fixture of the English Aristocracy scene, was often seen dancing at parties, and was well-known in society as a charming and dainty lady. In a way, she'd be comparable to a modern socialite - however, history has shown that she was far more than just a pretty face in high society.

Do other people have to see you as you see yourself? We can imagine that Ada Lovelace probably had a rich, analytical inner life - without it, there's no way that she could have seen the practical uses of mathematics in computing. However, there's likely a fair number of her contemporaries who saw her as a party girl - a Barbie doll, if you will. Should Computer Engineer Barbie's appearance be changed to be less feminine in order to reinforce her career? Perhaps this a situation where it's actually better that, like Ada Lovelace, this Barbie should be a pink-clad coder.

Sure, your personality affects your life - but so do your looks! How exactly does your relative attractiveness effect the rest of your life, though? FaceResearch.org is finding out!

FaceResearch.org runs short online psychology experiments exploring the traits that people find attractive in faces and voices. Run by Lisa DeBruine and Ben Jones - experimental psychologists working at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland - the Face Research Project is heavily informed by the work of Dave Perrett at the University of St. Andrews' Perception Laboratory. "We're interested in how people read faces and the ways in which this relates to experiences they have during their life," explain DeBruine and Jones of their work - reminiscent, perhaps, of YouJustSeeMyFace! Bad-dum ching!

Some of the findings from their published studies:

The site is always recruiting participants for other studies, especially those that link facial structures to personality traits. 

Do you see other people as they see themselves? One controversial web study is asserting that you probably don't - especially if they're in a conflicting social category from yourself.

Project Implicit is an online social experiment that has been running since 1998 and assumes that people don't openly express their social biases. To gauge any unspoken implicit biases toward one's own social group, the Implicit Association Test measures interference between conflicting categories. Project Implicit started with measurements of racial bias, but has expanded its work to examine other forms of bias - and even some silly explorations, like the "Are you a Human or an Alien?" test.

Project Implicit, very similar to another web-based social experiment that you know and love and *COUGH COUGH* FOLLOW ON TWITTER AND FACEBOOK *COUGH COUGH* uses the data it collects to publish some fascinating research. Some of the more intriguing findings from their website:

As much fascinating research is, Project Implicit isn't without its critics. The blog Mixing Memory indicts the project in their post Experimental Philosophy and Implicit Moral Judgements, stating that, "...there is no real evidence that [the IAT] measures attitudes, much less prejudices. In fact, it's not at all clear what it measures, though the fact that its psychometric properties are pretty well defined at least implies that it measures something."

What do you think? What is the IAT measuring - and what does it say about human nature? Sound off in our comments!

Do others see you as you see yourself? What if there is no "you" to be seen?

A few years ago, Beki Grinter, an associate professor at Georgia Tech's College of Computing, began a study that looked at a peculiar intersection of housework and technology: the Roomba. The disc-shaped automatic vacuum uses artificial intelligence to "learn" rooms and the best path for cleaning. Grinter wanted to look at whether Roomba owners thought of their automatic vacuums as household helpers or technological gadgets. However, what she discovered was far more hilarious, disturbing, and thought-provoking than anyone anticipated.

"The thing about Roomba is that you gotta treat him the way you want to get treated!" explains YJGM Portland's own Anthony, when talking about his family's vaccum. "Once you arrange your house for him properly, he works well."

Anthony isn't alone in his Roomba fanaticism. Grinter and her team discovered that Roomba owners dress up their vacuums, rearrange their houses to allow the device to work more efficiently, and in general treat the gadget as a beloved pet. 70% of users gave their Roomba a name, and about 53% of those users assigned the Roomba a male pronoun and personality traits. All of this happened despite early versions of the Roomba having numerous fatal design flaws that often left the device almost useless for cleaning.

"I was blown away," said Young Sung, a researcher who worked on Grinter's team. "Some Roombas break a lot, they still have functional problems. But people are willing to make that effort because they love their robot enough."

The more that Roomba owners anthropomorphize their robot maid, the more that they are willing to accept the robot maid's shortcomings. "They're more willing to work with a robot that does have issues because they really, really like it," said Grinter. "It sort of begins to address more concerns: If we can design things that are somewhat emotionally engaging, it doesn't have to be as reliable."

While some companies are seeking to make robot helpers that learn from their mistakes, these Roomba owners are proving that it may be prudent to focus on interfacing with human nature - appealing to people's desire for relatable objects and entities in their lives - than advancing for technology's sake.

NERD BONUS! Not all robot maids are made to be likable. Take, for example, this maid robot which looks like a terrifying sentinel-slash-battle-drone from another planet. At least 33% of YouJustGetMe Portland would cry every time this particular maid robot asked whether a guest takes one lump or two in their tea. Hint: that 33% is Nick.