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Listening dominates on Facebook

From Facebook’s statistics page:

“More than 100 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day”

But

“More than 20 million users update their statuses at least once each day”

By far most people are logging on to Facebook and then just reading what their friends are up to, instead of telling anyone what they are up to.  Conventional wisdom is that Facebook and other social networks are all about sharing (i.e. talking), but it seems that the dominate activity is listening (i.e. spying).

If the modus operandi on Facebook were more about connecting with close friends and family, I think the amount of sharing (i.e. talking) would go up, because for many people broadcasting their lives to a network of semi-close friends and colleagues is a bit intimidating.  Which explains why most people just listen.

My hunch is that in the near future we will find ways to parse down our list of followers to only close friends so that the social aspect of social networking is more prominent, whereas to date it has been much more about the networking.

Having a conversation with a few close friends or family on Facebook is not at all intimidating, and that’s what I think will start to emerge and convince the 80% that are just listening, to talk.

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