And yet another Facebook blog...

Nothing new about the topic of this blog. It should be no surprise though. I'd like to think of my generation as the "Facebook" generation-- a generation severely affected, shaped and defined by the prevailing social networking sites of the times. Most started out with friendster.com. Along the way, we encountered myspace, multiply, twitter and a bunch of other networking gigs.


"Social Network" -- by this I mean the movie-- won a number of awards at the recent Academy Awards. I've seen it a couples of months ago, and I have to say it was an interesting movie. The storyline was quite of interest to me, since Facebook, a site where friends get connected, was actually started and developed by supposed best friends.

Going back to facebook.com (at this point, I obviously mean the website), it has become at once clear that the site has changed the definition of friendship. At the very least, it has called a number of us to re-examine its concept in a digitized world. I remember long ago, as a child, the only way to truly communicate with friends was by either seeing each other physically, by snail mail, or through the telephone. But with facebook, as well as a bunch of other social networking sites, keeping in touch has not only been rendered faster and easier, it has broadened the scope of "friendship".

The impetus for my decision to blog about Facebook once again is an application I used just this morning. It's called "14 Best Friends". As the name suggests, the application seeks to discover and post who your 14 best friends in Facebook are. What really sparked my interest in this application is not so much the result. Rather, I was amazed at their attempt to operationalize friendship. They took into consideration three factors: number of comments, number of likes, and number of words. Using some weird, unknown formula, the application then takes the aggregate score, compares it with the other results, and makes a ranking. The final output is something which resembles this:




Look at what friendship has been reduced to. It's not based on trust and mutual admiration. It's based on how active a person is on your Facebook wall. Of course, I know better than to take this application seriously. I do not think anyone would. But perhaps we should consider what this application says about people and Facebook. Such is the importance that the former has laid upon the latter that a real, working relationship would demand that first, an approved friendship request, and second, persistent and active posting of comments on the wall. Perhaps it isn't too far fetched to contemplate the possibility that friendship itself has become digitized.

JERIC CRUZ
Blog 15