The big question about Facebook that I have always
wondered is that, are people really the way they are as its portrayed in Facebook.
Are they really happy as they seem to be? Are they really as smart as they
sound? Are they really as social minded as they seem to be (especially when
they promote and share a non-profit cause) or is this just a way for them to
look good.
Recently we did an exercise in class where we
thought we could use social media to understand and get insights about our
customer. We thought of using the Facebook posts, comments to understand the
customer. But when I thought more of this hypothesis, I wasn’t sure if the Facebook
identity would be same as the real identity. And I saw that my curiosity
amplified. I want to use design thinking to understand if marketers can take Facebook
at face value to understand their customers. Is social media Analytics, maybe I
am using this too broadly, but atleast facebook give us rich and deep insights
is the big question I am trying to answer.
Sometimes when I log in to facebook, I wonder does Facebook
make me happy or sad. And now when I recently googled to do some research, I
realised that I am not alone. I really want to dig deeper into this “necessary
evil” of Facebooking to understand what is really going on. Or does what I feel
really depend on my mindset? Is so aren’t my state of mind so fleeting? Can
this really add value to marketers. Do they really get to see my real
personality?
For example, let me take myself as a teaching tool.
I have ‘liked’ comments that I least care about. In fact I have ‘liked’ posts for
the notorious reason that they would return the favour back and like my posts.
And other times I have liked posts, not because I like the post but because I
like the person. With today’s growth of social analytics, I wonder if we can
really understand our customers by what our customers post, like and follow. And then I wonder, I know I am addicted to Facebook.
Does Facebook make me happy? Sad? If I ask a regular customer, a person why
they log in to facebook, they would say that they do so so that they can be
well connected with their friends and be in touch with them. Facebook is an
amazing concept in the sense it allows us to
For example recently I logged on to Facebook after
getting back from school. I had a rough day at school and 2 interviews. I can’t
really say the interview went well. So it’s one of those days you are not sure what
you are doing with your life. So I came home and logged into Facebook. First I
see a couple of my friends from India who have taken pictures with their family
during one of the popular Indian religious festival. It reminded me of the time
when my mother used to make Indian delicacies and we used to celebrate as a
family. Instantly I missed home! I click on “like” button and I comment “happy
vinayaka chathurthi” (Vinayaka Chathurthi is the name of the festival). I actually
didnt feel very good. But I left a happy comment. But what really was in my
mind is “ I am so frigging tired of my life now and I just want to be back home
in India”. But, I did leave a nice
message though I was in a bad mood. Is this reflective of my personality?
Partly I think yes. I usually say nice things to people just so I don’t offend
them –even if what they say I think is annoying. Am I doing the same thing on Facebook?!
Maybe we not only pretend on Facebook but also on real life. Who can say no to
this? Don’t we all wear a mask the minute we walk into office or even a party.
Do we wear the same mask when we log on to Facebook? If that is the case, is
Facebook a more true reflection of self?
I did a lot of research on this to understand more.
One of the studies says that from the posts and comments, they were able to
predict the age bracket and gender correctly 92% of the time! Using what I
learnt in design class how can I test this hypothesis? I think! I would
probably do a generative research, do a journey map of a persona and compare
that to the personality trait that pops out of the facebook. I would choose few
basic traits which can be easily tested 1) Extrovert/Intovert 2) Generally happy/loner
and so on. The more I think about this the more exciting it is. Watch out for
this space! More interesting research, and my own research and their results to
follow!
Hi Shivi - I understand the overall topic of how true our personalities come through on Facebook and how this might be interesting for marketers, but I'm not quite sure yet of how you might address this in the paper. Is your idea to research someone both offline and on Facebook to determine the differences or will it include other types of research? Perhaps we should talk about this a bit more offline (i.e., not over FB). :-) The blog itself is quite short and there are a number of errors (probably just careless errors that you didn't realize you were making, including not capitalizing Facebook most of the time). There is also a paragraph where the end of it is missing because the sentence is just cut off. See if you can address those things for future blogs and definitely consider this when writing the paper. Let me know how I can help.
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