May 22, 2008
The other day, I was biking up the Bathurst hill and I passed the Telus billboard advertising Facebook mobile on their phones for the upteenth time. Fun fact: Rogers was the first to advertise their Facebook mobile service, followed by Bell and Telus. 
The billboard reminded me of sign I saw on the window of the women’s clothing store Smart Set at the Eaton Centre earlier in the week. It had a Facebook logo and was advertising some new fashion cubes application, where you can compete with your friends about who has the best fashion, or something equally ridiculous. I was taken by the “Add Smart Set Fashion Cubes to your applications!” that was under the Facebook logo. I think that was the first time I’ve seen such technical language on the outside of a women’s clothing store. It’s still super gendered (compete with your friends to see who is the hottest), but really, is anyone surprised? I looked out for more Facebook logos as I walked through the mall, and not surprisingly there where two more at the Bell World and Rogers stores.
But that’s not all! At the end of April, I saw a presentation at CaseCamp about the success of TD Canada Trust’s Facebook app. That same night, Bryan Segal, VP at Comscore did a presentation about the insane popularity of social media in Canada. According to Comscore, Canada is the “most penetrated country” and “we view the most content and spend the most time interacting with social media.” In this context, its not really a surprise that Toronto is madly in love with Facebook.
So, this all got me thinking. A clothing store advertising it’s Facebook app, and a bank has one too? And there are so many extra Facebook shirts in Toronto that random bike riding junk collectors are wearing them? What I’m witnessing here in Toronto is so obvious that it’s invisible to me. It’s the first time a social web service, or anything from the internet really (besides when the web itself became big and we started seeing URLs all over the place… but that’s more a protocol and less a commercial service), has become so tightly integrated into so many aspects of mainstream life. For Torontonians, Facebook is becoming the mediator for so many everyday interactions, between people and between people and companies, and its being done at level of penetration we’ve never seen before.
Moar!
Rogers TV ad for Facebook mobile
My growing collection of photos of Facebook appearing in real life around Toronto
Tags: toronto, academic, facebook, thesis
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May 21, 2008
There was a rather ratty looking guy with crazy dirty hair carrying a desktop computer, three rods of something, a half exploded tv-like electronic device of some sort and two bags of miscellaneous parts, all while trying to ride a bike… and he was wearing a blue FACEBOOK SWEATSHIRT.
Tags: toronto, academic, facebook, thesis
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February 20, 2008
I’ve been back in Toronto since late December working on my social web ethnography, which - surprise surprise - has quickly evolved into just being about Facebook because people in Toronto are completely nuts for Facebook.When I left Canada for Australia, Facebook was huge in Toronto (we had the largest network in the world, but we’ve been overtaken by London) but not as huge as it is now. My friends have been teasing me because I still get excited when I hear someone on the street or at a bar mention Facebook. “I can’t believe you’re still surprised by that! It’s totally normal.”
Anyway, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how and why I used Facebook before I started formally researching it. I deleted my “real” account a few months ago, but created a new account under a different name which is invisible to searches for research purposes. Even though I’m still technically on Facebook, I’ve noticed my use of it and the way I think about it has changed… I’m much more distant and self-aware of what I do on it… it seems far less normal to me but far more normal to everyone else. I realise how much my view has changed in reading something I wrote last year about Facebook, a few months before I deleted my account:
i use facebook as a social utility to keep in touch with my friends. but most people don’t use it this way. people i haven’t spoken to in years add me. people who wouldn’t say hi to me at the mall add me. people who have met me once add me. i don’t know what to do in these situations. i usually have nothing against these people, but they aren’t people i’d share my personal life with. but not adding them is considered rude.
the biggest one i struggle with is people i know professionally who add me. i see facebook as my personal, private leisure space. allowing people i know professionally into that space is like inviting them over to an intimate dinner party with my friends. i can’t relax, i can’t be myself because i feel like i have to constantly perform professionalism. but at the same time, i usually like the person and want to keep in touch. and obviously, its not good to offend people you work with. worse still, i can’t explain any of this, since there is no “reason” box to write a message when you decline someone’s add.
this is further complicated by the fact that i don’t have entire control over my identity…my friends can add wall comments, or tag me in photos that i didn’t take
i was talking to greg about this… why doesn’t facebook have different profiles for different contexts, like friends filters on lj? it would make so much sense. maybe its part of their plan to make things more drama-rama and thus more exciting, like those reality tv producers
I no longer see Facebook as a leisure space or as something personal. Using Facebook feels more like feeding some giant slightly evil marketing AI robot that we are all creating but have no control over. But that’s probably only because I think way too much about it. Like most things in the world that are “normal,” I think most people use Facebook without thinking about it. As a cashier said to me the other day after she overheard me talking about the evils of Facebook “Is it really all that bad? I mean if people want to write stuff and ask people when they want to hang out, what’s the problem with that?”
Tags: toronto, canada, academic, facebook, thesis
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