Do Profiles Define 'You'? My Log of Creeping on Facebook

Rather than just describing 3 pages I looked at, I have also chosen to critique some aspects. I feel this adds a personal touch, and feel free to comment on my opinions I am curious to know if you all agree or not.

When starting this assignment I immediately went to the girl I know who uses Facebook much more than most other people I know. Surprisingly enough the more I looked through her page, the more cluttered and convoluted it became. While many aspects of her page matched to the norms of an avid user (approximately 1000 friends and 300 tagged photos), the 'likes and interests' tab was completely out of control. She has over 2000 pages liked within her information section. Whether or not this is due to boredom and liking pages is her way to pass the time, the result of 'liking' on this scale has created an utterly confusing image of her that I would contest has negated any sort of persona that used to exist through her Facebook page. She has thusly defeated the purpose of a social network by changing herself from a person in a digital space to a conglomerate of random sayings, things, and situations.

The second person I looked at on Facebook was my younger cousin. Just about to enter high school this year, he has yet to really use Facebook as the social medium that it is. His posts are infrequent, and usually involve cheering for a hockey team. The part I found most interesting on his page was the vast majority of the wall posts were app ads of friends who just completed some sort of quiz on Facebook. Even though our ages are just a few years apart, the differences in how our respective ages are using Facebook is quite remarkable. Personally I hope Facebook does not become a clutter of pointless apps and stays the simple, clean 'social' network rather than a 'self discovery though 10 question quizzes' network.

Another I looked at was a very intelligent friend of mine whom I greatly respect. His use of Facebook is notably different than others I have seen. His use of Facebook is much more sensible than others, which has made it appear much more personal as well. Instantly I noted that his friend count was substantially lower than other people I know, sitting at 162, which shows he considers those people to be people he wants to continually associate with and hear from in the future, rather than having them just as a buffer to a list of names. Also, unlike many others who have defined themselves though liking thousands of generic sayings or situations such as "thinking there is an extra stair, and almost trip because you try to use it", he has defined his personality through his notes, which he portrays his thoughts using his own wording, which is often dense, sophisticated, and sometimes cynical. This is not to say he does not use the 'likes and interests' features on his Facebook page, on the contrary his lists are the most interesting out of all my friends, because I know he put these pages there for a reason rather than just arbitrarily agreeing to a random phrase loaded up on 1000awesomethings.com. He has even taken the time to alphabetize his pages, further showing the care he has taken to tailor his Facebook page to create an image of himself. He is one of the few people I know who self-evaluate their image on Facebook, and his entire page shows his devotion to his identity, and as such he has accurately reflected his real life personality with his digital persona so well that his own biography tab explains him better than I am able to.

From browsing profiles it seems that people definitely have different ideas on how Facebook should be used. Clearly I have a personal philosophy that clashes with many user's practices, yet I think it is because many people have not stepped back to evaluate what their goals are for using social networking sites. What are your thoughts on the purpose these websites, particularly Facebook, should serve?