I Googled “types of Facebook users” to get a background for this post, and most articles I came across generally talked about two things: Certain ways people use Facebook and their annoyance rating. (i.e. here and here.)
Those lists are entertaining, and do have a massive ring of truth to them, but they seem to come across as “don’t do this, it’s annoying.” If you used those lists as a guideline to what not to do on Facebook, you might as well delete your account and have no social media presence. Silence is the least annoying option.
If you’re going to be on social media, it’s inevitable you’re going to annoy someone. And that all those Facebook user type lists are all written with a bias , depending on the type of Facebook user writing them (and mostly by the crusty old media stereotype writer).
So to me, I say “be yourself”. If you annoy one person, who cares. After all, Facebook wouldn’t be one great melting pot if we didn’t have all kinds. If you annoy tons of people, okay….maybe there’s something there you should really fix.
Now that we got that out of the way, here’s my biased list examining the type of people that sign up for Facebook:
1. The businessman – He read somewhere that he could leverage it for business, and then got an account and started brainstorming of ways he could use it to make money and generate leads, but complete missed the point of it being a “social network”.
2. The parent - Got an account because a younger (but not kids age young) relative sent them an invite to show off family photos. Doesn’t really know how to use Facebook, until their kid shows them the joys of Pet Society and Farmville.
3. The academic - see Businessman. Also is on it out of curiousity, and because everyone and their dog is talking about it, so they decided that they’d better write a thesis on it before a rival academic does.
4. The genuine friender – Migrated from Friendster/Hi5/other older social network when everyone on their “friend” list started doing so, mainly to keep in contact with all their friends. Thinks all the above are old fogeys going gaga at a novelty site. Facebook is a product of their generation, so pardon them if they feel a sense of ownership of social media and all that jazz. (And here’s Time sticking it back on behalf of old fogeys).
5. The meet-new-people-er – Joined Facebook because they needed more friends, not because they wanted to connect with existing ones. You’ll usually find them friending a female with a decently good-looking profile picture going, “Can I be your friend?”
So there’s my unabashedly biased list.
And I might just write my also unabashedly biased list of Facebook etiquette rules one of these days.
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Tags: Facebook, Social media