I wrote a few days ago about how my Edible Wikipedia post was making its way through the halls of Internet popularity. It has been interesting to watch it move from Kottke to Waxy to Japundit to Boing Boing and so forth.
What is more interesting is what I've not seen. Facebook. I've seen a lot of LiveJournal. LiveJournal has consistently been providing hits for the post every day of this particular run. Not an overwhelming number, but maybe 30 to 100 every day.
In contrast, Facebook has provided maybe 2 or 3 hits every day. I think part of the reason is that LiveJournal does community better than Facebook. Facebook is pretty good at person to person relationships, but lousy for groups. That's showing here.
When I look at the LiveJournal hits, we can see the link naturally meandering through a series of social networks. One person posts it, his network sees it, some people re-post it, and it really does wander around.
Facebook, by contrast, doesn't seem to exploit this viral meme migration. I have a few guesses as to why this might be:
1. Overload - There's so much stuff that flies by in your Facebook feed, that it's hard to prioritize it.
2. Devaluization - The value of a particular piece of information in your Facebook feed has very little value, because it feels like mass broadcast - as opposed to something being thoughtfully shared
3. Defocused Networks - Your Facebook Network is huge and unfocused. You start to lose the intent and intensity that you feel in a more focused group like LiveJournal promotes.
I'd like it if some of my LiveJournal users (Andrew?) could comment on the differences you see between the two platforms.
Interesting observation. The other thing I notice is that Facebook doesn't have much to do with the larger information sharing environment of the web. Facebook isn't a good place to look for information, in general--even the info about people, at it's best isn't notably better than what you'd find on the web.
Facebook has been successful by creating new ways of sharing some people information, but it's focus on doing so comes with a lack of focus on the wider expanse of information online--even including basic meme-link sharing.
So, now, more and more, Facebook let's you share links, etc., and even has a way to enter in all of the tracks and track times for an album of music, etc. Potentially, it could keep expanding to include more and more types of information and ways to link to it / connect it up--at the very least, there's a huge pile of examples for how to do so across the web, and Facebook probably doesn't have to do much more than copying some of these to successfully become more generalized.
Posted by: Jay Fienberg | 05 December 2007 at 18:58
to my mind, LJ was specifically constructed to do one thing well - i was initially going to say that thing was something along the lines of write blog posts, but on further consideration, i think it's really "start discussions". if i put a link up in LJ, i don't just provide the link - i talk about how i found it, why i think it's important, why my friends might find it interesting. while it's not impossible to do that on FB, my comments there only show up if the FBer (a) notices the post (b) notices that there are comments attached to it and (c) bothers to look at the comments.
the more i think about it, the less i can see the "one thing well" for which FB is designed...
Posted by: the buhrger | 05 December 2007 at 22:18
(i arrived here via the buhrger's eljay.)
i can't figure out what people get from Facebook. it lacks any content of interest to me; i think Facebook feels like awkward small talk and Livejournal feels like conversation. sometimes the conversation is just catching up with friends, and sometimes it's more of a salon, but it's always engaging.
Posted by: ironymaiden | 12 December 2007 at 16:18
It's interesting. I have never once heard someone refer to facebook as "engaging". So the word when presented for LiveJournal is telling.
LiveJournal, as Andrew says, is more focused. More evolved in some way.
Posted by: Jim Benson | 12 December 2007 at 17:24