My Facebook experiment: Part Deux

I know the suspense is killing you.

Tuesday, I described my project to figure out if my Facebook Newsfeed was dominated by a handful of active and frequent posters, or if the traffic represented a good, more diverse cross-section of friends and colleagues.  My hunch was the former; the truth proved to be the latter.

Of 518 friends in my network when the counting started, 320, or 62 percent, posted something on Facebook at least once during the week of July 13-19, a much higher percentage than I had expected.

So, how many posts do 320 people actually produce in a week.  A few people ventured guesses: 1000, 900, 2100 and 650.

The grand total was 2087 (kudos to Dawn for her guess of 2100).  That's an average of 6.5 posts per person.

Something else that maybe only I find interesting is that an almost equal number of people posted just once as posted more than 10 times.  64 people posted once; 72 people posted more than 10 times.  Nine logged in with more than 25 posts.  The lead poster reached the 77 mark and probably single-handedly skewed this entire experiment.

Friday was the busiest day with 362 posts.  Then came Tuesday (322), Wednesday (316), Thursday (295), Monday (285)*, Saturday (273) and then Sunday (234).

I can report that by the end of Monday, 155 people had posted at least once.  65 more people joined by the end of Tuesday.  39 on Wednesday, 23 Thursday, another 23 on Friday, 6 new Saturday and 9 people posted for the first time in the week on Sunday.

There you have it.  My experiment is over.  People use Facebook.  Who knew?

*Counting on Monday didn't start until 6 a.m., so that number would be a little higher if it represented a full 24 hours.

My Facebook experiment

So, I just finished a little experiment. No worries, no animals were harmed during my testing, but my eyes did start to bug out a bit by the end.

A few weeks back, after observing the updates and postings on my Facebook account over the course of a few days, I got to wondering exactly how many of my "friends" were actually active Facebook posters. The number of posts seemed prolific. Still, I had this feeling I was reading the work of a very active minority, all with very understanding... or oblivious bosses. It seemed like every day, the posts came from the exact same people. Over, and over, and over again.

So, thinking back to 7th grade science class and the scientific method, my hypothesis was this:

While a large and growing number of people sign up for Facebook, and while 518 of those people are a part of my Facebook "friends" network (at the beginning of my experiment), a solid majority of people do not actively post updates, photos and news stories or participate in quizzes about their favorite "Happy Days" characters.

With that as my hunch, I set off to collect my data and prove my point. I wanted to know how many of my "friends" actively posted items and how frequently they did it. I also wanted to get a sense, from a business of advocacy perspective, exactly how big an audience you can reach through your Facebook network.

Starting at 6 a.m. on Monday, July 13 and ending at midnight on Sunday, July 19 (basically, six hours short of an exact week) I recorded the name of each "friend" who posted something on Facebook (at least those close buddies who had not blocked my ability to see their posts). Then, skimming through the Newsfeed a few times a day, I jotted down each time a person posted an item.

The process was hard only on my eyes, and the results surprised me.

Of my 518 Facebook "friends," 320 posted at least one update during the week. That's 62 percent, or quite a bit more than a small, vocal and active minority. And, that doesn't include anyone who looked at Facebook, read the updates, but didn't post anything. It also doesn't include any of the people spending a beautiful week in July on the beach.

I remember loving the unit in 7th grade science on the scientific method. There was no pressure. Come up with a hypothosis, do your experiment and then prove your guess either right, or wrong. It didn't matter if your original guess was correct, only that you followed the method to test it.

In this case, my hunch was wrong, but people appear to find Facebook very right.

More fun with Facebook numbers and my experiment later. Until then, a question for you. Take a guess: with 320 people posting during the week, what was the grand total number of posts?

Post a guess in the comments below.

Status update: FIRE!

Experienced a bit of a first this weekend.

More and more, social media sites like Twitter and Facebook are beating the traditional media in the "breaking news" game.  Granted, pesky hold-ups like fact checking, sourcing and talking to witnesses sometimes keep newspapers and TV news websites from being the very first with the news, but yesterday, I felt first-hand the frustration of not being able to get news from the newspaper, only to find the breaking information I was looking for on Facebook.

About 11 a.m. yesterday, a long-time local discount furniture store went up in flames.  The store is just a half mile from my house.  I was out and about when I first saw the huge plume of smoke.  As I drove closer and closer, I realized it was VERY close to where my house was.  I got about three blocks from the fire before the police turned gawkers away.  Clearly, I knew there was a big fire, but couldn't tell WHAT was burning.

I went back out to finish errands and returned home a few hours later.  Right away, I went to websites of the local newspaper and TV stations to find out what was burning.  Nothing.  No information.

More than a little surprised, because massive fires don't happen all that often where I live, I jumped over to Facebook to check on things.  There, I found three status updates with pictures and comments on what was burning, when it started and what was happening at the scene.

I know that the work that goes into an actual news report has to answer the who, what, where, when and why.  And, it has to be right.  Yesterday, all I needed was the "what" and I got it from social media.

Have you met the other me?

UPDATE:  April 10 - Found out yesterday from the same friend who wrote the original article that Facebook's "Use Policy" prohibits having two identities.

Psychiatrists, discuss.

----

I'll be breaking no news here in pointing out the ginormous increase of Facebook users in the past many months.  According to its own site, Facebook reports an increase of 25 million active users from just January to February 2009.

Using just my high school class as a sample, I've been amazed at the huge increase of classmates who have joined and become active Facebookers since I set up my own page just about one year ago.  I went to a pretty small high school, around 800 students in a typical year, and my graduating class was just under 200.  As of this morning, 90 of my classmates - all in the mid-30s age range - are Facebook users.  When I joined Facebook, that number was in the teens.

For many, keeping up with their Facebook accounts is a challenge in and of itself.  Now, a friend of mine - in both reality and on Facebook - writes an interesting article on people who are setting up TWO accounts... one for professional use and one for personal use.

The people interviewed make very good points, and as someone who has checked out the Facebook and Myspace pages of perspective employees, their advice could have been helpful to a few folks I've NOT hired.  Still, I have to wonder if some of the "magic" of Facebook might be lost if bipolarization of the site gains steam.