Class 4 Assignment 3: Facebook "likes" vs. "friends" vs. "shares"

           The "like" function in Facebook can be briefly summarized as giving positive feedback on certain posts and/or pages. Facebook's help section defines like as a "way to give positive feedback and connect with things [one] care[s] about." Users can like any specific posts, including status updates, photos, videos, shared links, and group pages. In terms of personal use, a "like" can affect the advertisements that show up on the users' newsfeed. Facebook also suggests three relevant items that users might be interested in. In corporate and commercial terms, the number of "likes" can directly affect the advertisement revenues. "Like" is a way of letting the owner of the content know that a Facebook user has enjoyed the content, without the burden of leaving a comment.

       

    "Friends" in Facebook are defined as a group of "people [you] connect and share with on Facebook." In short, friends in Facebook are just as same as friends in other social media platform. Friends in Facebook are each and every users' audiences, and also, vice versa. One notable point is that Facebook lets the users create specific audiences for their activities. The users can select certain friends to turn the chatting status off; exclude specific friends for viewing their post; decline friend requests without acknowledging the person who requested for friend. Facebook's friend system is a great blend between privacy and sharing, allowing its users to create individualized virtual social network with varying social needs.

           

The concept of "sharing" in Facebook is closely knitted with its news feed. If an user share a link in his/her timeline, it eventually reaches his/her audiences' respective news feeds. If anyone of his/her friends like, comment, or share the previously shared content, the content eventually reaches a bigger audiences. This means that contents regarding certain trending and important topics have the potential to reach a huge proportion of the Facebook's global audiences. The concept of sharing closely links other Facebook functions such as likes, thus achieving its goals of connecting its users and creating a global social media network platform.

Screenshot of sharing the #Oscars post from Immersive Education's Facebook Account

This is an assignment from the Immersive Education course that I am taking at Boston College. The course is called Collaborative Computing. For details, visit the immersive BC portal at http://ImmersiveEducation.org/@/bc