Born out of a Harvard dorm room and escalating into nothing short of an international phenomenon in a few short years, the social networking website Facebook has found a home down home for people in Pickens County.
Would you rather log on to your computer than drink your coffee first thing in the morning? Ever find yourself asleep face down on your keyboard late at night because you can’t pull yourself away? Do you get antsy when you don’t have access to your computer? If so, you may be one of thousands of local residents who use the site ardently and often––so often, in fact, many say they check the site several times each day.
For those who’ve never heard of Facebook, here’s a synopsis: An online tool where people who know each other can keep connected through status updates, photos or videos. With a Facebook account, a person can post updates about what they’re doing – from the mundane like, “I’m cleaning out my garage” to the exciting, “I just won $1 million bucks.” With more than 350 million users, Facebook is now the most popular social networking site out there.
Facebook, originally called “thefacebook”, was launched in February 2004 and is the brainchild of Mark Zuckerberg, a former Harvard student who dropped out of the Ivy-league school after starting his new “hobby.” Within 24 hours of launching Facebook, Zuckerberg had 1,200 students as members.
Extending from Harvard to other big-name campuses such as Yale and Stanford, the site grew to include not only college-aged students but also, well, basically everyone. From students and young professionals, to grandmothers keeping in touch with their families from far away, Facebook has users from every demographic imaginable.
One such user, Anne Rumble, says she loves the site and uses it to keep in touch with her family both near and far.
“I’ve been using Facebook about a year, and I’ve got around 135 friends that I keep in touch with through it,” said Rumble. “Of those, probably 31 are family members. All my grandchildren and two of my sons are on Facebook.”
Along with being able to see and share pictures of her grandchildren and children, Rumble said she has been able to contact people she hasn’t seen in years.
“Not too many people my age are on it, but I do have a few, and I’m now Facebook friends with an old friend from Columbus, Georgia that I hadn’t heard from in years and years and years.”
Rumble, who started out on MySpace (a similar social networking site that has all but been summarily beat-out by Facebook - think Google versus AskJeeves) said her grandchildren prompted her to get on Facebook.
“I check my Facebook page a couple of times every day. It’s newsy and you find out what’s going on with everybody. I like the pictures. My family puts up videos too, and they’re funny. Just in general, it’s very entertaining. Half of my family live in other places, so it’s really good to keep up with the grandchildren around in Oxford and Conyers and up in Tennessee. I keep up with them where I otherwise wouldn’t be able to. It beats picking up the phone and paying for a phone call.”
Rumble is like the 50 percent of active Facebook users who log on in any given day. According to statistics from Facebook, more than 35 million users update their status each day and more than 2.5 billion photos are updated to the site each month.
Rumble cautioned people against what she sees as the negative side of Facebook.
“I knew someone who was having a terrible time in her life and was posting some terrible things about it on Facebook. I think you have to watch doing things like that. You don’t want to just open up your whole personal life to everybody.”
Rumble said she agrees with one of her children who likened Facebook to going to a big party and talking to everybody there. “It’s just fun,” she said.
People of other ages agree.
Fifteen-year-old teenager, Kayla Collis has been on Facebook for a couple of years and loves the site for her ability to keep connected.
“I check my Facebook account usually throughout the day probably five or six times,” Collis said. “I have it on my phone, but if I’m on the computer, I’ll spend about 15 minutes on it.”
Collis, like more than 65 million other active Facebook users, accesses her account through her mobile device, receiving texts and emails when someone comments on her status. Typical Facebook users, like Collis, spend more than 55 minutes each day and write 25 comments each month on the site.
“I keep up with all my UGA friends. I have cousins that live in North Carolina, and I’ll talk with them through Facebook and keep up with them through it. I used to do some of the games, but I just don’t use those any more – but my mom does. I just can’t get into them. Even my grandma has a Facebook account.”
Being in Alaska working on an offshore oil rig can get pretty lonely, but not for David Patterson who keeps up with his Pickens County family and friends via Facebook.
“I get on Facebook about every day so I can see what’s going on with my brother, my kids and my mom,” Patterson said. “It gives me something to do while I’m at work stuck out in the ocean working on an oil rig.”
Patterson has been in Alaska for a year but hails from the Jerusalem area of Pickens County. He has family in Pickens, Roswell, Blue Ridge and Tennessee, and Facebook, he said, is instrumental in keeping him informed about what’s going on.
“It’s just a good way to stay in touch. I don’t ever see anybody ‘til I go home, and with Facebook I can check in daily. It’s hard to get to a phone and call, because I don’t have much of a signal.”
The average Facebook user has 130 friends on the site and sends eight friend requests per month.
Patterson, who now has around 200 Facebook friends, said he got on the site when he went back to Alaska to work. For Christmas, Patterson gave his mother a computer so she now has a Facebook account.
“I love to see the pictures people post. I’m so far away it takes so much time to call everybody. I talk to a lot of people every week through Facebook that I wouldn’t talk to unless I came home. I’ve got friends I keep in touch with that I haven’t seen since high school.”
Businesses, too, have found Facebook a useful tool for getting out information, like local restaurant 61 Main which uses the site to post its daily menu.
“We started out just getting people’s e-mails and sending out our menu through e-mail, but we got our Facebook page about 4 to 5 months ago and now we post it to that,” said Amber Fountain. “We have around 400 friends, and that’s just in the few months we’ve been doing it.”
Fountain was turned on to the idea of using Facebook for the business when she took a social networking class through the local chamber of commerce.
“We put our holiday closing hours and special menus on Facebook, and if we do drawings, people can respond through the site as well.
“Jena (owner and chef) is from out of town, so she has a lot of people from Pennsylvania as friends, but over half of our people are from Jasper. We’re trying to utilize it more now than we have been. We recently had a problem with our computer system, and I posted a notice on Facebook asking if anyone knew a computer person, and people responded back and helped me find someone to fix it.”
Last week the Pickens County Progress joined more than 700,000 businesses that have active Facebook pages. In less than a week, we garnered more than 300 fans. Of those, 72 percent are females, and the biggest age demographic is among those aged 35 to 44, with 46 percent of our users filling this category. The next largest age group among our users is 45 to 54 year olds, who make up 17 percent, followed by 25 to 34 year olds with 16 percent.
The Progress’ short news updates on Facebook originate from longer versions of the same stories on the newspaper website. These are typically breaking news items that would be outdated by the time the next weekly printed edition hits the street. Up to date news on school closings and road conditions posted daily last week.
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| Find information on the Facebook Fans Favs contest at www.knowpickens.com. |
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