Article II: MySpace and Facebook: Applying the Uses and Gratifications Theory to Exploring Friend-Networking Sites
What gratifications do you think someone receives from having a friend-networking site?:
A friend networking site is a "social content network"(Zigme). Friend networking sites have become increasingly popular in the past couple of years. About 80% of college internet users have either a MySpace page or a Facebook page (Raacke). But the question is why is everyone using these sites? What is so appealing?
One of the reasons people love these friend-networking sites so much is it allows them to keep in touch with old friends. 90% of college students with a MySpace of Facebook page say it is to keep in touch with old friends (Raacke). MySpace and Facebook both provide wonderful search engines on their sites which allow users to type in the name, email, or username of their friend and it will bring up all the users on that site that match their search. MySpace even allows users to search by location and age. Facebook, being more of a school oriented website, allows users to search for friends by searching for them by their school. With all of these great features it makes it really easy for users to find old or even current friends. These friend-networking sites have many communication options such as comments on a user’s page which are public, there are messages to a user for a private conversation, users can comment on other user’s pictures which are public and lastly most sites now have an instant messaging system which allow users to have private conversations instantly. With all these great options of keeping in touch one can see why users love these friend-networking sites so much.
Another reason people use these friend-networking sites so much is to make new friends. 56% of college students with a MySpace of Facebook page have one in order to make new friends (Raacke). These sites allow you to browse through other users in your area and give you the basic information about them to allow you to see if you are interested in adding them as a friend to your page. Once you have added them and they accept your friends request you are able to comment and talk to them as much as you like. This also gives you access to their pictures. Millions of people every day make new friends on MySpace or Facebook. Some users even take these relationships further than the internet. Some friends feel comfortable meeting up in person. In some circumstances people find someone in which they engage in a loving relationship. After talking on these friend-networking sites people develop interests in other people’s personalities and decide to meet. Once they meet sometimes they develop into relationships. For some people it is easier to make friends on the internet. People that are shy or not that outgoing may enjoy making friends on these friend-networking sites. It allows them to hide behind their computer until they feel comfortable meeting the people in person.
Another popular reason was to post social events or parties. 21% of college MySpace or Facebook users have a page in order to post or read up on social events (Raacke). Making a MySpace or Facebook page for an event you are hosting is great advertisement. It allows users to receive information about the event and find out if they are interested in attending. These friend-networking sites allow users who are hosting the event to send event invitations to those friends who they would like to invite to the event. After the users who were invited to the event read their invitations they can send their RSVP back to the user who is hosting the event. In addition, other users are able to see who has decided to attend the event in order to help sway their decisions. This is a convenient alternative to sending out tons of invitations. It is also helpful for the host to keep track of how many people have RSVP.
Lastly, people use friend-networking sites in order to post and look at pictures. 57% of college MySpace or Facebook users admit they have a page in order to look at or post pictures (Raacke). Lots of users love to post pictures of themselves at special events for their friends to see and comment on. Lots of users love to browse through their friends pictures. Being able to look at your friends’ pictures gives a user a sense of what the place was really like when the picture was taken even if they could not be there.
Friend-networking sites also have a tendency to boost self-esteem. The more friends a user makes the more they will like themselves. The more flattering comments users leave on their pictures or page, the happier they will be. If they are not receiving positive comments toward other users they can simply delete that user and shy away from them (Valkenburg 8).
There are many reasons why sites like MySpace and Facebook are so popular. These are just some of the many. Who doesn’t love making and keeping in touch with friends? With millions of users already there are plenty of friends out there for you.
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3 comments:
Your paper is very detailed i like the way you laid out your paper, it is very informative. The statics on your paper make it more reliable and interesting. i didnt know that having a MySpace or Facebook actually boosts self esteem. I think that maybe we should recomment these social networking sites to people who have really low self esteem.
Great jog summarizing the article and organizing the points!
Great essay! Very interesting topic. I think most of us can relate because most of us have a MySpace or Facebook account. However, with the increasing popularity, I worry about safety issue on both websites. As you mentioned people use them to meet new people, there's always the risk of people faking identities and not being who they say they are which poses safety risks.
Also, I don't know if I would suggest anyone who has low self-esteem to use Facebook or MySpace as a way to overcome that. I think there are other ways something like that should be handled.
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