Why It's Okay to Be a Facebook Oversharer

What's weirder: People who share too much of themselves on social networking sites like Facebook, or people who won't share anything at all? Thanks to science and Farhad Manjoo, we finally have an answer: It's the latter.

Manjoo, a tech writer for Slate and sometime Mixed Media interviewee, calls definitive BS on the shrinking rump of Luddites, contrarians and paranoiacs who think they're accomplishing something by refusing to board the Facebook train on the grounds that it threatens their privacy or takes away from real-world interactions. Smashing their arguments one by one, Manjoo likens the holdouts to those annoying people who make things difficult for their friends by refusing to carry a cell phone:

For a long while -- from about the late '80s to the late-middle '90s, Wall Street to Jerry Maguire -- carrying a mobile phone seemed like a haughty affectation. But as more people got phones, they became more useful for everyone -- and then one day enough people had cell phones that everyone began to assume that you did, too. Your friends stopped prearranging where they would meet up on Saturday night because it was assumed that everyone would call from wherever they were to find out what was going on. From that moment on, it became an affectation not to carry a mobile phone; they'd grown so deeply entwined with modern life that the only reason to be without one was to make a statement by abstaining. Facebook is now at that same point -- whether or not you intend it, you're saying something by staying away.

Ah, but what of those who inhabit the opposite extreme: the social-network oversharers? Aren't they just as bad in their own way?

As someone who has been (unjustly) accused of Facebook exhibitionism, I was relieved to read a piece of research recently published by Moira Burke, a graduate student in human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University. (Media Mob pointed me to it.) Burke looked at a broad cross-section of new Facebook users and concluded that their behavior -- in particular, the uploading of photos to their profile pages -- showed the marks of classic "social learning"; that is, the amount of information they shared depended on how much information they saw their friends sharing and how much positive feedback they received when they did share something.

In other words, if you're a Facebook exhibitionist, chances are it's because your friends are, too, and prefer you that way. Well, most of your friends, anyway.

Earlier: Confessions of an Accidental Facebook Slut

Facebook Creeps Me Out: Why executives are afraid of social networking